BV London Pub of the Year 2024-25 - the results

Go on then, let's have a winner, shall we?!?

It's been a close contest this year, particularly deciding which of the ten pubs make my top five and which will have to sit out next years competition to make way for plucky young upstart newcomers, but thems the breaks...

Indeed, last year's winner, the Star & Garter in Bromley has narrowly failed to make the final this year and I do feel a slight pang of sadness, but I'm sure they'll be back. (If you haven't read parts one and two, this won't mean a whole lot of jack shit, so check those out first!)

Right...

GBBF - but not as we know it?

My relationship with the Great British Beer Festival goes back a long way - I've been attending it for over 30 years and have never missed one - so it was with a little trepidation that I attended GBBF 2025 last week.

Trepidation, because it was always going to be just that bit different this year; the first GBBF to be held outside London since 1990, and, consequently, my first GBBF not at Olympia (or its deceased sibling, Earl's Court) so I was prepared for unfamiliarity. And I don't always like unfamiliarity. 

But let's be thankful for small mercies; in three of the last five years, there hasn't been a GBBF at all, and the future of the festival was in doubt (maybe it still is?) Additionally, it's a huge undertaking involving a lot of wonderful volunteers (of which I wasn't one this year, but I feel like I probably should've been), so brilliant work from everyone involved in making it happen. Anything is better than GBBF not taking place, like last year.

On paper the NEC (which is technically in the Borough of Solihull, not Birmingham, but hey...) has long felt like a good potential festival location. The site is massive, it's more central (to the rest of the country) than London, and it has the necessary supporting infrastructure (so I'm told by an HGV driver!)

So, how was it?

BV London Pub of the Year 2024-25 - part two

Welcome to the second half of the 2024-25 London Pub of the Year award. 

In the first installment we revisited last years top five, and now we're going to check out five brand new entries. (Well, two of them are brand new, the other three are, in Top-of-the-Pops parlance, re-entries, but what the fucky hey.)

Let's chuffing well crack on, shall we?

BV London Pub of the Year 2024-25 - part one

Like the proverbial Renegade Master, we are 'back once again'. It's time to pick a London Pub of the Year, and I feel like a very old hand at this lark nowadays.

Will there be a surprise winner? Has the Greater London pub scene dramatically changed in the last 12 months? Am I still deeply frustrated with the quality and choice of cask ale in the capital? 

All these questions and more will be answered over the next few days and soon enough a winner will be crowned.  If you're not familiar with how the contest works (because even I have some rules to stick to!) check out the previous years. 

Now we'll crack on by revisiting each of last year's Top Five, and in a few days time we'll have the five newcomers/retreads. One of these ten pubs is going to be announced as my London Pub of the Year 2024-25. Ooh goody. Whoop-de-bloody-do. Can't fucking wait. And so on.

The best fish and chips in the world?

The aroma hit me as soon as the car door was open. 

Modest, unassuming...

Like a siren's musk, it attracted my senses instantly, wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

Chips. Frying - as our Lord, in His infinite wisdom, undoubtedly intended - in beef dripping. 

I say 'attracted my senses' because it's really more than just an aroma. It gets into your system on another level, possibly even engaging with ones sixth sense. Deep, rich, barely describable umami.

Before anything got to interact with my actual tastebuds, I knew it was going to be totally fucking awesome. The best chippy ever? In the entire world? It might well be.

Drink for Victory: BV's favourite cask beers of all time!

The VE Day celebrations last month, fairly subdued as they were, got me thinking about VE Day 1995, which was much more of 'a thing'. Perhaps understandably, because 50 years is a 'bigger' anniversary than 80 and, more poignantly, there were many more people alive back then for whom it actually meant something tangibly memorable.

Me being me, it got me thinking about Young's Victory Ale, and that, in turn, got me wondering if it would be possible to come up with a definitive list of my favourite cask beers ever. 

People do occasionally ask me 'which one was your favourite?' when they find out out many pints I've had, and it's really not a straightforward question to answer, precisely because I've had over 12,500 cask beers since I started keeping records in January 1996. 

I was drinking for a few years before that too, though the only beer from my 'bibens juvenilia' period that still stands out as a contender for this list would be the aforemented Victory Ale. That's how good it was.

Time for avocado to finally fuck off?

Has it finally had its day? Avocado, I mean. 

I ask the question with a sort of cautious optimism, because I've noticed over the past year or so that the once ubiquitous menu staple might be finally fading back into deserved demi-obscurity.

And not before time.