The Grosvenor Arms, 2, Grosvenor St, Mayfair

I was somewhat shocked to read your review of the Grosvenor Arms. I visited it yesterday and was delighted to find a pub in Mayfair that was just that, no designer sofas that you can't get out of without the assistance of a JCB, a menu that was not attempting feebly to replicate the Roux brothers or a corporate badge sterilising me into thinking that I could be anywhere between Ikea and a well polished school canteen on Christmas day. Instead I found a warm welcome, an excellent pint of Black Sheep, a generous portion of ham, egg and chips and I escaped for under a tenner, something that in this part of London is a job to achieve from a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Go back and review it again. I think it is a credit to the management that they have not been seduced down the route of the pretentious path that so many of its neighbours have and continues to be what it is, A PUB I seem to have been stuck a lot in Mayfair recently, which must be to do with all the Jimmy Choo shoes I've been buying. Well, I've got to do something so I can fit in with the fashion parade that is the Black Lion in Plaistow. As I amble down Bond Street, admiring the single sock for sale within a gold lacquered box in a Japanese fashion boutique, the facade of this pub has often beckoned to me seductively. Unfortunately, like so many of the celebrity supermodels that shop in the area, it's only the facade that's appealing. Once inside I am immediately beset by the noisy jabbering of IT contractors and music so awful that my ears threaten to leave my head. A pathetic selection of beers offers nothing drinkable but Guinness, and the meals are exclusively dead animal in microwaved sauce. Irritatingly wacky writing on the ceiling beams tells me there is a Terrace Bar, and in front of me a TV squats in a box like a caged beast. Neither prospect much raises my hopes. Old photographs with no relevance at all to either the pub, Mayfair or even often London line the walls in a feeble attempt to create some semblance of olde worlde pub cred. They fail. I sit nursing my pint and watching in horror as a squeaky boy scout type and his 1980s lover (dyed blonde hair, suit, black tights and then a WHITE SOCKS AND TRAINERS combo) cavort to the gut-churning music. Dragging my gaze away, I realise that the bar staff manage to combine bad hair, a goatee beard, compulsive bollock-scratching and a hunched back between the two of them. This pub has all the atmosphere and excitement of a Sunday morning spent watching religious television.

---

All content © Random Pub Finder 2001-2010, website development by Doogal