Pubs and Bars / Pub of the Week
Pub of the Week: The Hillgrove
Oh, to be a dog in a pub. The pug sits, a little off-kilter on a wobbly three-legged stool, at a wooden table with his owner and her friends.
He licks his chops as a trio of young guys at a round table finish off bowls of yaki udon and tempura rice from Kansai Kitchen, who have been residents at The Hillgrove since July 2017, their seats on a recent evening quickly filled by another group as soon as they get up to leave.
A man in a blue jumper stands up and picks through the tables to get down to the bar for another round, and the pug sits up straighter.
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He doesn’t even have to give the man puppy-dog eyes: he’s already making a bee-line to scratch behind those floppy ears with a grin on his face and his pint glass hitched into his elbow.
“He’s lovely,” says the man to the pug’s owner and she smiles as her dog wags his tail and shamelessly casts around for the next person who will give him attention.
The wall behind them is a patchwork of hundreds of old cardboard pump clips, crossed by fairy lights and dried out hop bines that tangle as they meet above the bar.
The Hillgrove is a dog-friendly spot to while away an evening
The new group on the round table browse the menu, drum on their pint glasses with sets of chopsticks, and then squeeze up tight as more friends join them with foaming pints.
The Hillgrove is one of Dawkins’ five pubs in Bristol, which include The Victoria in Clifton and the nearby Green Man, also in Kingsdown, and their name is picked out in lead-lined stained glass around the front door and the end of the bar.
Tonight, Supersonic, Bristol Best and Bristol Blonde are the Dawkins offerings on the polished hand pulls. Two options from Wrington’s Twisted Oak Brewery also keep things local, while the full complement is completed by Dark Star‘s Hophead and Yorkshire’s award-winning Great Heck Brewery.
“Hundreds of miles of desolate, monotonous, burnt out steppe cannot induce such deep depression,” says a misquoted snatch of Anton Chekhov wisdom chalked up behind the bar, “as one man when he sits and talks and one does not know when he will go.”
Still patting the pug, the man in the blue jumper invites himself to sit down on a spare stool at the table with the owner and her friends. He rests his empty glass on the table and falls into conversation.
The Hillgrove Porter Stores, 53 Hillgrove Street North, Kingsdown, Bristol, BS2 8LT
0117 924 9818
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