Worst Pub of the Year 2020

Not much competition for my worst pub visit of 2020:


Small Beer, Crouch End, London N8


This shop conversion has been a pub for quite some time, so doesn't belong to the recent trend for micropubs. It's fairly small, dim and grungy, with a bar in the dimmer recesses of the rear of the single room. There are four hand pumps, with nothing I liked the look of, so I perused the keg options, plumping for a wheat beer from The Kernel, a brewery whose bottled ales I occasionally pick up from shops in Sheffield but whose kegged versions I had yet to try. Well, it was cold, fizzy and lacking in anything interesting by way of flavour; what was I expecting?

What else can I say about Small Beer? As well as being dark, minimalist, uninviting, with bare brick walls and challenging background music, it has the worst pub toilets I have ever used. The urinals were made out of some sort of metal boxes - taking a pee was like putting your most vulnerable fleshy parts into a letter box; and you can imagine how difficult it must be to clean something like that. The solution (it's so obvious, really): let's not bother! Seriously, these toilets have *never* been cleaned.

rating: 1 (but only because negative ratings are not available).

For me it has to be The Red Lion. To be fair some of its short comings were probably covid related but that doesn't excuse poor service and poorly kept beer. I was expecting a lot from this pub but was left very disappointed.

The pubs which got a '3' and probably quite optimistically given the lack of choice:

The Blind Beggar
Boston Arms
Duke of Wellington
Good Samaritan
The Leinster Arms
The Weavers Arms

But the award for Worst Pub of the Year 2020 goes to:

People's Park Tavern

I couldn’t get out of the Lord Warden fast enough back in March. Sad to think it was my last tick before Covid lockdowns.

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Originally Posted by Tris39

But the award for Worst Pub of the Year 2020 goes to:

People's Park Tavern

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I've been mostly avoiding posting reviews of pubs during the covid restrictions as it's difficult to get a good impression of a pub's atmosphere, facilities and service when things are so abnormal. To be fair, though, "a semi-industrial pub with exposed air handling vents with ductwork and dark gloomy interior, all of which looks like a Goth pub that would be more at home in Camden Town" doesn't sound like a place I'd be dropping everything to visit when things improve, anyway.

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Originally Posted by Brainypool

I couldn’t get out of the Lord Warden fast enough back in March. Sad to think it was my last tick before Covid lockdowns.

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Horrendous! Bad luck.

Over the summer I tended to judge pubs on how safe we felt. But being that as it may, if it quacks like a duck blah blah you'd think it is indeed a (fuzzy) duck. So I'm not impressed when we roll up expecting to enjoy a pint in their garden to be told they "don't take walk-ins". Despite said walk-ins would have doubled the number of customers. And the couple who pulled up in the car park just after us who were also told to sod themselves would have trebled it.

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Originally Posted by sheffield hatter

Not much competition for my worst pub visit of 2020:


Small Beer, Crouch End, London N8


This shop conversion has been a pub for quite some time, so doesn't belong to the recent trend for micropubs. It's fairly small, dim and grungy, with a bar in the dimmer recesses of the rear of the single room. There are four hand pumps, with nothing I liked the look of, so I perused the keg options, plumping for a wheat beer from The Kernel, a brewery whose bottled ales I occasionally pick up from shops in Sheffield but whose kegged versions I had yet to try. Well, it was cold, fizzy and lacking in anything interesting by way of flavour; what was I expecting?

What else can I say about Small Beer? As well as being dark, minimalist, uninviting, with bare brick walls and challenging background music, it has the worst pub toilets I have ever used. The urinals were made out of some sort of metal boxes - taking a pee was like putting your most vulnerable fleshy parts into a letter box; and you can imagine how difficult it must be to clean something like that. The solution (it's so obvious, really): let's not bother! Seriously, these toilets have *never* been cleaned.

rating: 1 (but only because negative ratings are not available).

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I liked it and gave it a 7 .Didn't post anything in the letterbox though.

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Originally Posted by Mobyduck

For me it has to be The Red Lion. To be fair some of its short comings were probably covid related but that doesn't excuse poor service and poorly kept beer. I was expecting a lot from this pub but was left very disappointed.

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I reviewed it 7 years before you and the beer and staff attitude seems similar.

My worst pub this year has to be The Watersplash in St Ouen's Bay, Jersey - a beach-side pub/creche hybrid with excellent views of the sea wall, but not of the sea!

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Originally Posted by Brainypool

I couldn’t get out of the Lord Warden fast enough back in March. Sad to think it was my last tick before Covid lockdowns.

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Originally Posted by Tris39

The pubs which got a '3' and probably quite optimistically given the lack of choice:

The Blind Beggar
Boston Arms
Duke of Wellington
Good Samaritan
The Leinster Arms
The Weavers Arms

But the award for Worst Pub of the Year 2020 goes to:

People's Park Tavern

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Tris you are a Scooge with your scores. I gave it an 8 and Pub Signman gave it a 9. Even if if I found out the barman had pissed in my pint any pub would score better than 2.

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Originally Posted by london calling

Even if if I found out the barman had pissed in my pint any pub would score better than 2.

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If only we had the opportunity to test you on this assertion.

In spite of visits to Redcar, Tadcaster, Pontefract and Selby all places with diabolical pubs the easy winner was in the East Midlands beer mecca that is Nottingham, even if it hadn't been in lock down(ish) times this place would be on anyone's list of shame. At least it doesn't beat my all-time worst pub.

I like to accentuate the positive, so I had better not mention the All Bar One in Regent Street, W1 which would have been my selection, had I made one...

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Originally Posted by london calling

Tris you are a Scooge with your scores. I gave it an 8 and Pub Signman gave it a 9. Even if if I found out the barman had pissed in my pint any pub would score better than 2.

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Perhaps the pub had changed since your and PSM's visit. I don't like officious bouncers, loud music, gloom and kiddies, let alone the inability to buy a pint in a brewpub which can't even serve its own beer on draught. Perhaps you got it mixed up with the nearby Royal Inn On The Park also on Vicky Park which is an altogether better proposition.

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Originally Posted by oldboots

In spite of visits to Redcar, Tadcaster, Pontefract and Selby all places with diabolical pubs the easy winner was in the East Midlands beer mecca that is Nottingham, even if it hadn't been in lock down(ish) times this place would be on anyone's list of shame. At least it doesn't beat my all-time worst pub.

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The Royal Children sounds awful. Peter Rydings liked it though.

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Originally Posted by Tris39

Perhaps the pub had changed

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This pub certainly seems to have changed since my 2017 visit, I gave it an 8 at the time, you managed to give it a super scroogie 1 a couple of years later. :D

I use the good offices of Pubsgalore to avoid visiting dire pubs but this place was the worst in 2020 according to my ratings.

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Originally Posted by Bucking Fastard

I use the good offices of Pubsgalore to avoid visiting dire pubs but this place was the worst in 2020 according to my ratings.

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Seems fairly harmless to me. Must try harder, Nev!

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Originally Posted by sheffield hatter

Seems fairly harmless to me. Must try harder, Nev!

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Good advice Will.Despite having joined Mr Winfield on one of his pub ticking epics,that's not my usual modus operandi.However after the privations of the last year ,I may have to change my tune when we are next allowed to go pubcrawling.My cup will then runneth over with contenders for Worst Pub of the Year.;)

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Originally Posted by sheffield hatter

If only we had the opportunity to test you on this assertion.

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True.

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Originally Posted by Mobyduck

For me it has to be The Red Lion.

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I was very pleased to find this years back and was sufficiently impressed to recommend it to friends as a good pre-match venue for either Twickenham or Harlequins, avoiding the rammed pubs near the grounds, but more recent visits (though not at all recent) saw huge and continuing demise and my last attempt suggested it may be... my last.

I have been to so few pubs in 2020 that I cannot name a worst so, if it's ok, I'll put a previous favourite, the Crown, in the dock. Visited twice in 2019 it has fallen off a cliff since changing hands with the new owner selling out (to the likes of guinness) and installing huge and awful bar fonts in place of most of the real ale pumps, now numbering 4/5 instead of the previous 16. I visited on a Saturday evening and, months later, a Sunday lunch, and was the solitary customer on both occasions, staying only for a half, such was my distress. Gone is the beer, gone are the chatty regulars who made standing at the bar so enjoyable and, I guess pretty soon, gone will be the Crown, RIP...

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Originally Posted by Mobyduck

This pub certainly seems to have changed since my 2017 visit, I gave it an 8 at the time, you managed to give it a super scroogie 1 a couple of years later. :D

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Yeah. I always give a new pub a five-minute window to get recognition. Not service as of course pubs can be very busy, rather pubs where the staff can't be bothered to serve you. This pub got '1' as it was being locked up an hour before the stated closing time, causing me a wasted journey. Once the five minutes are up, I walk with '1' being the default score. The worst - though not rudest - service I ever encountered was in The Oxford Retreat where three staff were just pottering about doing nothing. I got chatting to a bloke and his girlfriend who were down for the day from Liverpool and a swift one for the journey home (it's opposite the railway station. We passed it in 2016, fortunately) and he told me he'd been at the bar for 10 minutes, so 15 when I walked; perhaps he's still there.

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Originally Posted by Bucking Fastard

I use the good offices of Pubsgalore to avoid visiting dire pubs but this place was the worst in 2020 according to my ratings.

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I also use this almanac but occasionally slip up, probably due to alterations made a few years after the previous reviews so People's Park Tavern was my worst POTY 2020. Duke of Wellington probably comes second.