The Canton Arms - Stockwell

177 South Lambeth Road, London, SW8 1XP

'And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made'

- Genesis 2:2

It was a hard week for God. He’s a divine being, so you may think nothing can be that difficult for him; but then building Ikea furniture is fairly tough and he built quite a bit more than that. Cut him some slack.

The question of what it means to be divine settled, I can safely say God must have been pretty tired from that first week of work. Not only did he work six days straight, building the heavens, the earth, and all the other add-ons, he also worked the first week of work ever. Imagine that? The first week back from holiday is bad enough, but the first week ever, with an extra day on top?! A commendable effort.

That is, of course, if it was truly the first week ever and we aren’t just another in a long line of pointless pet projects. Who knows how many other heavens and earths he might have lying around, strewn across the floor like so many unfinished Lego sets on Boxing day. An unfinished state would explain a few things - war, famine, climate change, Nigel Farage. And it’s likely that as a bachelor he can get away with leaving things unfinished and untidy - another point for the prosecution. It’s not like his pacifist of a son is going to complain either.

If we say he did work that week, if we say it was hard work, if we say he rested on the seventh day, I imagine, aside from praying (to himself) that Sky Sport’s Super Sunday wasn’t 2,000 years away, God ate. 

Religious or not, Sunday is a day for feasting. Preparing the body and mind for the week ahead by stretching your stomach beyond its limit and drinking to excess. While the house is a fairly good place to do this, eating out is better. For one thing, there’s no washing up. For another, God’s left his latest misfiring planet in pieces on the kitchen floor - cooking that roast isn’t looking so appealing.

Local pubs do a roaring trade on a Sunday. None more so than The Canton Arms. It’s an early bird that gets a table here for more than two people. Luckily, being only two of us, we managed to sneak in at the last two stools, pulled up tight against the bar. Sitting there, drinking orange juice and chewing on freshly baked bread, while sneering at the suckers in the queue, up just slightly too late to beat us to the front. They probably stayed in to help God find a new lightbulb.

I think of the Canton as the perfect pub. It lacks pretension, just a good chalkboard of specials, beer from decent sources, and everything made of old booze-soaked wood. I’m sure some purists would cry heresy that half the pub is dedicated to food, but screw them. It’s the 1530s again and we’re starting a new perfect pub religion. Besides, pubs in the wilds of South London aren’t going to survive on drinks alone; well, not if they’re also going to remain habitable. 

Another thing that makes this pub perfect is its use of round plates. That’s right, round plates. I don’t like eating from square plates, tiles, chip frying baskets, buckets, hammocks, or miniature urinal troughs. If the food is beyond excellent, then by all means waste time in Habitat buying something ‘kooky’ to serve it on. If it’s anything below that, spend my money practicing in the kitchen, not staring at a potter’s wheel.

I made my choice almost immediately. The Canton serves up a slim menu of ‘traditional’ roasts. Beef for one, duck for two, and lamb shoulder for five. Arrgh, is the noise I make when I read the word lamb on their chalkboard. I never visit with enough people to tackle that monster though, so fish it was. That’s right, fish. I’ve had the beef before. It’s pink, moist, tender, delicious, and filling. Today, I wanted three courses, so beef wasn’t an option. Instead, a whole lemon sole, drowned in butter, and hollandaise sauce. So delicate, so sweet, so fresh, so perfect. I’m going to make that noise again. Arrgh.

The fish followed a portobello mushroom, baked with spinach cheese and breadcrumbs. It’s good food for a cold day. Smokey and sticky, a cheese not too heavy on the nose, but lacking salt. With a mushroom that size, you’re going to need a fair amount to seem adequate once cooked.

The fish preceded a flourless chocolate cake darker than the night and twice as bitter. It’s a trick this dessert. Like a dwarf wrestler, it might not look tough, but it is. A deep richness and condensed calorie content that makes the accompanying honey and yoghurt ice-cream look healthy by comparison. Following the beef with this dish would be an error. Following the lamb with this dish would be fatal.

Three courses, bread, and no beer. As we left, the sun shone through the almost ornate original windows that line the perfect pubs front wall, illuminating the queue of would-be-diners still waiting for their loaves and fishes. Clearly, God had found his torch and if this demand continues, The Canton Arms might have to employ his son in the kitchen.

The Belle - Bassingbourn

61 North End, Bassingbourn, SG8 5NZ

Rural pubs have suffered more than most from the decline of the Great British pub, or so I'm told. Our village, out in the 'shire an hour or so from London aboard the belly of the metal horse is probably typical. It had at least four when we moved there, now it has two and a few years ago had just one. The latter is a short stumble from home. A small pub, with a small bar, a small beer garden, a massive thatched roof, ales from Greene King sitting alongside Carlsberg (or similar), and the distinct reek of desperation from endless promotions chalked up on a board outside. Still, run better than by the previous owners, who once refused to make sandwiches for five hungry office workers with nowhere else to eat. Gift horse firmly slapped in the mouth.

In a previous life, the second pub - a longer stumble down the road - was our drinking hole from the age of 16, serving us once every Christmas Eve after we all fled home. Decor that hadn't been updated since pilots in the Second World War scratched their names into the window, a pool table, darts board, Stella on tap, and the culinary heights of cheese and chips. It must have balanced on the breadline for a long time before it closed, collapsing into ruin before being bought, refurbished, and relaunched last year.

Now called The Belle, the pub has gone gastro in an attempt to fend the Grim Reaper from the door...again. Rejoicing locals stirred by the appearance of something new in their sleepy hollow queued through the door on opening night and booked tables for weeks afterwards. Clearly, having firmly poked this new arrival and deemed it safe, they decided not to return. On our Friday visit, three other tables were filled in a room of twenty. Perhaps the football, perhaps the sunshine, or perhaps the slightly slow service put customers off. It definitely wasn't the food. Expectations were low since that basket of cheap cheddar smothered oven chips and cheap cheddar a decade ago, but a Jerusalem artichoke salad, sharing board, various fish, roast  pork, and lemon tart were all beautifully presented and delicious. I was shocked.

Good food, good ale, so why was The Belle deserted at peak time on a Friday evening? Why has a pub that - on the surface - done everything right failed to attract diners?

I'd argue that it's moved in the right direction, just not far enough. The Belle is impressive for a local boozer, but it's still just a local boozer, albeit one with a hardwood floor and clean toilets. What it's not is a truly gastro experience, one to attract people from miles around. The locals have been there and done it. That market's exhausted and the food, while good, isn't enough to see people jumping in the tractor or Mercedes and racing for dinner from the surrounding farms, fields, and manor houses. 

To fill the tables, The Belle needs to crank the culinary offering up a good few notches. Caesar salad, cod fillets, a burger, and an obscenely priced rump steak don't make a menu smack you in the face and get you pencilling lunch in the diary. I could play roulette with that menu and while whatever I ate would be perfectly well cooked, filling, and tasty, it wouldn't be memorable enough to mention to a stranger on the train back to London and definitely wouldn't justify a return ticket (sorry Mum). The menu talks about 'local sourced produce' - this would be a good place to start, ditching much of the seafood and the Thai fishcakes, and concentrating on what's grown in and around the 'shire. Besides, Cromer is 100 miles away and I doubt they get much lemon grass growing out on the fens.

The Highbury Barn - Highbury, London

26 Highbury Park, London, N5 2AB

Garbage, most football pubs. Soulless holes that profit from proximity to a ground and exist solely to pump each punter with a yard and a half of cheap lager every other Saturday and some week nights in between. The one under the M6 was a particular favourite of mine. A dank pit, with ITV on a fourteen inch TV, warm Budweiser from a multipack, and a foot of stagnant water on the wrong side of the latrine. Still, it makes for a good story at parties, doesn't it? 

There are exceptions - rare gems that people actually enjoy visiting - The Crown & Sceptre, The Strawberry Pub, The Coach & Horses, and The Lass O'Gowrie (RIP), to name a few. For them, there is no smoke in the toilet, no deliberate rough surfaces in the cubicles, no fat b*st**ds at the door eyeing up your colours and looking for a fight. Strangely, what stars these pubs in Google Maps is the same thing that attracts people to the pub on a non-match day: good beer, friendly bar staff, decent food, and the fact that you can walk in and out with an iPhone still in your hand.

From Arsenal you expect the best of course. Every pub within half-a-mile caters to the Land Rover driving, ski trip taking, wax jacket wearing, white wine drinking, former Chelsea fans who've grown bored of Abramovich and, along with Arsene Wenger, have taken an expensive punt on Mesut Özil. 

I joke of course...some of their fans drive Toyota Prius.

The Highbury Barn I've visited only on match days. A slightly dark, sweaty pub, reminiscent of a Wetherspoons, where I felt comfortable practicing my best football voice - Fackin' 'ell ref! - has been renovated: flooded with light, given a separate restaurant area, and had the most futuristic of tables installed. Honestly, these things dispense beer at mouth level, they'll save a fortune on the washing up. The food has possibly been renovated too. Last time I went with the brilliant outdoor BBQ'd burger. Five quid, and it came with chips - better value than my ticket. Now they offer up meat from Godfreys Co. on the opposite side of the road, a place I've heard nothing but acclaim for and a choice that will surely get the wax-jacket brigade firmly seated for the lunchtime game. 

The sausage and mash served was tasty and came with peas. I can't stress that enough. Too often I end up with meat, mash, gravy, and no vegetables. 'Has tha nowt green?'. There isn't much else to say about sausage and mash. No lumps in the latter and plenty of flavour in the former. Perfect. The fact that I'd managed an almost identical meal earlier in the day from Piebury Corner probably speaks volumes for the quality alone.

Bar eleven overpaid useless ***** in West London pulling their fingers out or a 3rd Round FA Cup draw, you're more likely to see Van Persie at the Emirates than me next season. That said, if I'm passing through The Highbury Barn will definitely be a reason to stop.

Disclaimer: The Highbury Barn invited me for a couple of beers. The food I paid for. And I do count many Arsenal fans as my friends. Some of them don't even own a wax jacket.

The Jerusalem Tavern - Clerkenwell

55 Britton St, Clerkenwell, London, EC1M 5UQ

Beer fast becomes a hobby. Surprised by that first bottle or draught that actually had taste, so the curiosity begins. Before long copies of the Good Beer Guide appear on the coffee table, every trip to a new destination involves a consultation with Twitter, and now, with Untappd, each sip is recorded, each destination marked, and each badge cherished.

I'm still ignorant. That bottle of St. Peter's Ruby Red Ale sat in the fridge for a month. The strange shape telling me this was some weird spirit, to be avoided at all cost. Luckily, I know people who aren't so stupid and while reading the lines of Twitter one day, I realised that this was beer. Good beer from a good brewery. Unfortunately, someone else had already drunk it.

Not to worry. The information now committed to memory, when a lunchtime meeting was suggested in central London, The Jerusalem Tavern - a pub owned by St. Peter's - was my sole and selfish recommendation. A dogleg away from Farringdon Station, nestled between furniture designers and corporate PR agencies, the imposing doors of The Jerusalem Tavern stand solid and closed. People barely visible through the dark windows on either side, the only indication that the place is open. Inside, it's a tourist's dream. More wooden panels than wall space. Small tables in unexplained pokey corners. An Ollivander's Shop of a pub.

Pointless to say, but the beer is good too. A silky pint of bitter slips down easily, perhaps too easily. This is a haven of the lunch meeting that turns in to an all day session, and from the almost wall-to-wall suits sat there at 2 o'clock I'm not the first to think that. The food is well suited to this audience. The dishes slightly more complex than you'd find in a standard pub, providing a good excuse to meet here more regularly. Of course, the litmus test is still the burger and it didn't disappoint - medium-rare, a strong bun, and a healthy dash of salad. The chips, all four of them, did. Potato that thick takes some cooking and there was far too much of a starchy chew to this side.

Apparently, The Jerusalem Tavern isn't open at the weekends. That's a shame as I'll need a day off to complete my mission of one beer from each tap and one more day to recover. Alternatively, schedule a lunch meeting here, just don't expect to make it back to your desk that afternoon.

A farewell to Oxford

Various

Better than any travel guide you'd care to read, one anecdote sums up Oxford perfectly. Visiting our local one afternoon, I found Bill Clinton sat in the back room, dressed in white, eating fish and chips, and flanked by no less than fifteen bodyguards. After finishing a pint of Fuller's London Pride (4.1%), charming a few old ladies, and exchanging banter with the locals, Bill left and pushed his way outside through a gaggle of American tourist to a waiting car. A typical weekday in Oxford.

It's ironic that the Mini was designed and built in Oxford. This is a city in tiny form. Everything is here within a single square mile: from China Town, to the West End, to 'ethnic town'. It makes a pub crawl near impossible, as you can drink five pints in the same number of metres. 

A cliche, but Oxford is a city of contrasts. The ancient buildings of possibly the most famous university in the world freeze tourists to the spot in awe; residents barely give them a second glance. Some of those same residents have the accent of a West Country farm hand; others that of a West Country landowner. That same university has an almost ancient Christian heritage; yet May Day is still the biggest festival of the year. The west of the city is one giant cow filled meadow; the south, one giant housing estate. The Cowley car plant is a state-of-the-art German owned facility producing mile after mile of Mini Coopers; the local brewers could probably run their delivers from a single mini.  

Oxford has spawned a disproportionately high number of artists: Lewis Carroll, Tolkein, Philip Pullman, Radiohead, Supergrass, to name a few. And they keep coming, with Foals, Stornoway, and others. The same can be said for brewing, where you have the established brands of Hook Norton, Wychwood, and Brakspear, alongside the new comers: Oxfordshire Ales, The Shotover Brewing Company, and Compass Brewery.

Aside from drinking a pint three feet from a former president, whilst in Oxford I've had Pimm's with monks on the lawn of Trinity College, a beer or two with a former CIA director, blacktie dinner at Blenheim, and meals at countless colleges. My employers have sent me from Oxford to The Hague, Istanbul, and New York. I've been up early running with the cows in Port Meadow and up late drinking in the Jamaican bar. For all my friends - residents and non-residents alike - criticise Oxford for being provincial, it's certainly provides some interesting experiences.

Sitting in the White Rabbit one lunchtime I was asked, if you could take one pub from Oxford with you, which would it be.

The Victoria immediately sprang to mind, with it's brilliant pies, ever changing ales, chilled glasses, and attentive staff. It probably just about edges it, but the more I thought, the more pubs flooded my mind, each the best for different occasions.

On a sunny day avoid The Trout like the plague and instead head to the benches at the front of The Plough in Upper Wolvercote. Alternatively, walk along The Thames to the lawn of The Isis Tavern, a quiet drink at the back of The Gardeners Arms in Jericho, or join the students in the garden of Cafe Tariffa on Cowley Road. 

If you're looking for a tourist's taste of Oxford, you can't go wrong with The Turf Tavern, The King's Arms, The Head of the River, or The Bear Inn. At each you will have to fight for a seat; although, in the dead of winter, the cold scares the tourists from The Turf Tavern, and you can sit outside with mulled wine and marshmallows in front of a roaring brazier. 

For a night out, definitely steer clear of George Street (except for a trip to The Grapes) and the west of the city. Instead, Duke of Cambridge in Jericho offers up great cocktails, and Raul's in Jericho offers up exceptional cocktails, albeit with limited space. Cowley Road is really the only option for a late night; there are enough Moroccan bars to shake a fez at, a couple of unremarkable clubs, and a Jamaican bar which never seems to close.

Oxford is possibly bucking the national trend for declining pubs. Pubs close and re-open weeks later in a much better state. The St Aldates Tavern, The Library, The Rickety Press, The Magdalen Arms, and The White Rabbit all replaced mainly hideous pubs which were never going to last much longer. And they keep coming, with Jacob's Inn in Wolvercote possibly the latest new food and drinking hotspot within the ring road.

All-in-all, I'll miss Oxford's many, many drinking and culinary options. London, of course, surpasses Oxford with number and range, but being a small town (city) of only 150,000 people, there is a hell of a lot on offer.

Pig and Abbot - Cambridgeshire

The decline in the number of pubs hasn't made the business any easier. Pubs don't just compete with each other, but almost any other form of entertainment you can think of. The one pub town, therefore, doesn't give free licence for profit - you still have to work to draw in the punters.

But how hard can it really be? Good beer, food, and service are the three necessary factors for success, and they're not that difficult to get right. Nail these three and the growth in your reputation is going to bring in customers.

The Pig and Abbot - in the brilliantly named Abington Piggots - is a great example of a pub run well. Nominated for a number of awards and a stalwart of The Good Pub Guide, I drove five miles, past two other pubs, for lamb pie, a log fire, and a pint of Nelson's Revenge (4.5%) from Woodfordes Brewery.

I'm certain they could still make improvements - trimming down the lengthy menu for a start - however, the locals seem to love it and the cars outside suggest that I'm not the only one commuting for my dinner.