The buses in Sheffield are pretty smooth, at least compared to the Isle of Wight. I might use them again when the Hungry Horse at Crystal Peaks Shopping Centre gets in the Guide.
Back in town, Sheffield Hatter abandoned me in Castle Square.
Will has boycotted Spoons, presumably because their low pricing puts at risk Sheffield’s traditional value family diners like Marston’s Winter Green with their £3.60 pints.
But I’m clearly an unprincipled sorta guy, and joined the value seekers of South Yorkshire (all better dressed than me) for a late lunch in the Banker’s Draft.
Sadly, you don’t get the mushy peas free unless you buy the fish and chips, which are actually a decent size and better than what you’ll get from many Nottinghamshire chippies.
The best value, but least advisable beer to accompany this feast is clearly a pint of Old Peculier, and so it proves. Cool and silky, good enough for a GBG entry anywhere north of Edinburgh. Not that you’ll be travelling anywhere north of Edinburgh at the moment.
Old Peculier tends to lead to unwise decisions, like ordering the “Snowy Road“, the Spoons attempt at Christmas pudding.
Later that night Mrs RM and Matt and I had a proper traditional Christmas meal at Hans in West One Plaza. That bottle of Bud isn’t mine.
The quality of the Chinese food in Sheffield really is the big unexpected win from our move North. The Spoons, I can take or leave.
retiredmartin 
They’ve done it because Timbo is evil and has made a deal with Satan. Why do you think all those Spoons have disappeared from GBG22?
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Have they ? What could POSSIBLY have replaced them ?
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Pubs?
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I’m with Will on the Spoons boycott, although young Matthew did drag me into the Tonbridge branch, for breakfast, a couple of Sundays ago. (He was paying!)
The breakfast was OK, but with tables left uncleared, the overall impression wasn’t great. I haven’t had a beer in one of Tim’s barns, since 2017, but the answer to your question, Martin, is they cut prices by not employing enough staff. (Perhaps they can’t get them, but Mr Martin should have thought of that, before backing team Johnson & Farage).
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I’ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes for food and drink.
And the Tonbridge Spoons had excellent cask beer on our last visit, which may well have been 2017 !
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My boycott is not on the basis of Tim Martin’s support for Brexit, or the quality or price of his food and drinks, or even the way his business model leads to the closure of proper pubs (evidence: no ‘Spoons in Belper but lots of really good proper pubs). No, it’s because I was asked to pay for my beer before the bar staff would start pouring it in three different Wetherspoons pubs in 2017 (in Leominster, Carlisle and finally in the Chancery district of London). On the third and final occasion (see https://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/pubreviews/53662/ 21st November 2017) I told the manager this would be the last time I went in a Wetherspoons, as a protest against this policy that the company had imposed; he lied, saying it wasn’t company policy, and laughed in my face when I told him I knew it was (it really was).
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Spoons HQ is in Watford, home of Luton’s arch rivals. Are you sure you weren’t wearing your 1982 Luton away shirt ?
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I am replying here to both Martin and Will, as whilst Dim Tim’s unabashed support for Brexit has been one of the main reasons for my boycott of his barns, there are other reasons. Some of these pre-date the advisory referendum, held in 2016.
Spoon’s may well supply cheap beer for poor pensioners, (I’m a pensioner now), but they do so at the expense of their suppliers. If you are a large concern, such as Heineken (no longer since the recent switch to Budweiser), then tiny margins are acceptable, providing the volumes are there.
This doesn’t work quite so well for smaller, independent brewers, many of whom get sucked into committing a substantial proportion of their output to Spoons, thereby running the risk that should the latter pull the plug on them, they will quickly run into all sorts of cash-flow problems.
The cheap beer offer from Spoon’s doesn’t help local, independently operated pubs either, as most are unable to offer such low prices. The other way in which JDW are able to low prices is by trimming the number of staff they employ. This is evident from the way in which tables are left uncleared (and presumably un sanitised) for quite lengthy periods. This practise does not create a good impression, and low staffing levels puts extra pressure on those that Spoon’s do employ.
I agree Martin, that the cask quality in Tim’s Tonbridge outlet was good that night we visited, but there have been other issues locally, of a similar nature to Will’s experiences from 2017. I can’t elaborate, as I have never experienced them myself, and as there are three JDW outlets in the West Kent CAMRA area, I am not going to point the finger at any one in particular.
Final word, the sight of Mr Martin pleading for special visas, so that EU workers, denied entry by Priti Patel’s vindictive scrapping of free movement, is a classic case of being careful what one wishes for. Schadenfreude certainly came back to bite him in the bum!
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Bonus point for spelling Schadenfreude correctly, Paul.
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That menu is obviously photoshopped, there’s no way Tim’s cheese of choice for all those meals would be an evil French Brie; it would definitely be a good traditional British cheese. Or possibly American spray cheese at 50 cents per can.
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American spray cheese sounds better than the cheese they sell in their supermarkets !
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I Googled the word Schadenfreude first, then copied and pasted it into my response.
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Not just clever, also honest.
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