Pubs and Bars / Pub of the Week
Pub of the week: The Annexe Inn
Tucked down a residential street behind Brightside Cricket Ground and dwarfed by the neighbouring Sportsman, The Annexe Inn is quiet on a weekday lunchtime but for a group of security guards grabbing a quick lunch and a cheeky half in the garden, and a couple of solo drinkers nursing a pint of bitter with the day’s newspapers. It’s a slower pace of life in here; even the fruit machine is quiet and subdued.
The bar, open on two sides to serve the hoards who frequent on match days, is stocked with an incredible range of spirits and wines, ciders, beers and soft drinks. Eight hand-pulls against the back wall offer Doombar, Butcombe and London Pride, as well as more unusual options – “the Boom Juice is quite tropical and fruity,” the barmaid tells one punter, who gives her a look and says he’ll pass. The team here have been quietly putting on vast ranges of excellent beers for years without fuss while all the trendy craft beer joints in the city centre take the credit for starting a craze.
is needed now More than ever
Despite looking small and unassuming from the outside, the pub opens out to offer plenty of seating in the main bar room, leading out to a conservatory that is a veritable hot-house on a sunny day. There’s also a large beer garden full of wooden benches, some shaded by the branches of a huge tree, to rival the best of them.
The Annexe has a huge hidden beer garden that catches the afternoon sun
Everything about this pub is genuine and original; worn in rather than chosen for its aesthetic. The chalked-up menu of pub staples to the side of the bar is hand-written out of necessity for changing stock, rather than a trendy design choice written by a professional signwriter. Even the prices evoke a Bristol of ten years ago: £5.95 for a hearty portion of sausage and mash. The pub is a reminder of more simple days gone by, from the wooden kid’s toy plucked from branch of Nat West in the mid-90s, to the swirly carpets now banished to purely ironic use in soulless Wetherspoons.
The clientele here might not be glamorous, and no one will be putting The Annexe on any trendy Bristol beer tours any time soon, but if you’re the sort of person that calls a spade a spade and you like a beer that tastes like beer should, then by god this pub is a pub.
The Annexe Inn, Nevil Road, Bishopston, Bristol BS7 9EQ
0117 942 7525
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