END OF TIMES : A PINT OVER £3 IN SHEFFIELD SPOONS

May 2024. Sheffield.

A day without a new post ! Dave will be writing to my Subscriptions Office (P.O. Box 666, Maidenhead SL9) asking for his money back.

You left me in a quiet Harlequin front room, paying my respects to one of Sheffield’s great publicans, and wishing I hadn’t drunk a can of 8% Double Weightless quite so quick.

Time to walk it off before I head back to Mrs RM (who was beavering away on her own blog) and incapable of conversation.

Central Sheffield is in the midst of quite an upmarket conversion programme, flashy food courts and Scandi stores, though you wouldn’t know it crossing the Don towards the castle quarter. It’s all happening behind these arty boards;

This scruffy looking bit of town houses the Eritrean cafes, the dingy punk venue, the budget hotels that tickers stay in when they can’t afford Retired Martin Towers rates, and a pub I’ve still never been in.

What Pub claims the Norfolk Arms has real ale is on from Thursday till it runs out, but it was the terrifying karaoke rather than the apparent lack of cask that had me putting my head and then swiftly withdrawing to the safety of the Spoons. I’m sure Sheffield Hatter will join me for a pint of Carling there some day.

Quite why I felt the need to make my annual visit to the Bankers Draft I’ve no idea. The beer quality is pretty good,

my Old Peculier a cool, rich 3.5, but it’s a fusty sort of place that makes the Wellington seem fragrant, though at least today I got a seat by the stairs to the loos, which felt like a win. Of sorts.

Why did I go for the OP rather than the PP ? Well, the Plum Porter, which gets its own weighting in the Retail Price Index, is now over £3. In Sheffield.

That Quinno bloke has been raving about the new Spoons grub, particularly the wraps,

but even at that price I wasn’t totally convinced by how much authentic Koreaness (?) there was in that wrap.

I’d taken another couple of swigs from the Old Peculier and the Dalston fizz when I decided to nip to the Gents, which proved a fatal mistake as both glasses had gone to the great glass collection centre in the sky on my return.

My pint glass had been at least a quarter full; I reckon 50p of beer stolen and it’s not even as if they have an autovac to recycle it.

Remember kids, if you need the loo and haven’t quite finished, leave something on the table to indicate you’re coming back. Keys, wallet, mobile phone; that sort of thing.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

30 thoughts on “END OF TIMES : A PINT OVER £3 IN SHEFFIELD SPOONS”

  1. “Remember kids, if you need the loo and haven’t quite finished, leave something on the table to indicate you’re coming back. Keys, wallet, mobile phone; that sort of thing.“

    🤣 🤣 🤣

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      3. Long ago I had my half-eaten breakfast removed while I was queueing for my second pint. That though was when Tim had his tables cleared quite regularly. I was given another breakfast which inadvertently meant 1½ breakfasts for the price of one.

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    1. I queried this with a guy in a pub in Wirksworth, of all places, one midweek afternoon. I can’t remember who was first in place at the urinal, but certainly he placed his glass on the window sill.

      He said that people were in the habit of dropping tabs (I think he meant drugs rather than cigarettes) into beer glasses. This was a midweek afternoon and we were the only people in the pub.

      Make of that what you will.

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      4. I can see that point, Will.

        Normally I’d have finished the pint first but I had a glass of soda (hydration) on the go and fizzy drinks tend to make trips to the Gents inevitable.

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      5. SH, My brother is inclined to ask for “a tab” on entering a pub and “settle up”, with his card, on leaving. I’d never do that for fear that the licensee would not only decide that I should also pay for someone else’s pint or two but also think I might not notice that I hadn’t had a starter or a pudding ( “one course is plenty” at my age ). One can’t be too careful these days.

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  3. Beer mat on top of your pint, them’s the rules. Though increasingly many Spoons (and quite a lot of other pubs) seem to be beer mat free zones these days.

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    1. No beer mats ! I judged there was sufficient liquid (just under a third at a guess) that it wouldn’t be cleared. I actually went to search for it where the glasses pile up, to no avail. I’ve noted near full pints left before…

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  7. “and haven’t quite finished, leave something on the table to indicate you’re coming back”. I remember when the concern wasn’t about staff taking the beer but other customers drinking it, hence it sometimes being made known that they’d spit in their beer before going to the (outside) lavatory. That was in Stoke.

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    2. In 1999 I tried to visit a GBG pub (King’s Arms) in Sunderland but they had a private party on. I took a swig from a half finished pint of Vaux and considered the pub ticked.

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