retiredmartin

March 2024. Sheffield.

The question I’m most regularly asked, after “Can I have your City v Arsenal ticket ?” is “Can you recommend anything new and shiny in Sheffield ?“. Well, “No” and “Yes, obviously“.

The Wickingman aka The Man Who Saved Bass kindly alerted me to the arrival of The Foresters (red marker, middle left),

which I’d somehow missed during its incarnation as The Great Gatsby, Yorick and Hush Bar, all names which don’t scream Proper Pub.

Foresters, oddly, does.

And that’s despite a “grown-up” menu,

and the sort of refurbishment Mrs RM likes.

That view is from the bench seating around the wall, a Sheffield speciality.

It seems to share a bit of lineage with Fagan’s, giant Guinness font and all,

but Fagan’s focus is pork pies and crisps, in the Foresters you get proper fish on veg,

and the best sausage and mash I’ve ever stolen off Mrs RM’s plate.

Oddly, just us eating about 5pm, but the place was filling up with an after-work crowd drawn by a playlist of Pink Floyd and Duran Duran,

an oddly un-Sheffield soundtrack.

Two very Sheffield beers on cask, the Lord Marples on the OK side of OK, but Mrs RM wolfed down two pints of keg Jaipur with out complaint. You wouldn’t know that; she’s grown bored of Untappd already.

Next time, I’ll have Guinness. And my own Pipers Sausage and Mash.

Central Sheffield is still looking a bit too quiet as dusk falls, but the area between The Moor and the Town Hall is being rapidly gentrified with Scandinavian shops called Humfly Skoflet and Jommy Ploge so the future looks bright.

But it’ll always be the pubs that define the city.