Pubs and Bars / A-Z Bristol pub crawl
A-Z Bristol Pub Crawl: The Robin Hood, St Michael’s Hill
I was born just a few hundred yards from the Robin Hood in the former Bristol Maternity Hospital, now St Michael’s Hospital, where my two daughters were also both welcomed into the world.
The white chimney of St Mike’s is always a comforting sight of our home city, in the same way that the Robin Hood is a comforting sight midway up St Michael’s Hill.
On a recent Friday evening, the pub was already busy with an after-work crowd, jackets still drying from the day’s deluge hanging up from hooks.
At the bar, knitted beanie hats – only slightly bigger than those on the heads of some of the newborns in the hospital up the road – were placed on top of half a dozen handpulls.
The brewery with the most beers available was Basement Beer, based on Upper York Street in St Paul’s opposite Lakota (which itself used to be a brewery).
All My Friends, a 6.5% New England IPA (NEIPA); Destination Unknown, a 4.8% session NEIPA; Little Citra, a 3.8% small beer; and Strawberry Lemonade, a 3.9% ice tea sour, were the Basement Beer beers on offer.
Other breweries included Arbor, Bristol Beer Factory and Wiper & True – with the latter’s alcohol-free Tomorrow lager on tap.
These Bristol beers can currently help wash down burgers and loaded fries from Paco’s Plancha; from £9.95 for a classic cheese burger to £11.50 for ‘the mother in law’, “a bit of a pig and a cow”.
Soon after 6pm on Friday, a 40-something regular wearing a smart jacket pulled up a seat at the bar, shook the hand of a friend in a baseball cap and sampled a Little Citra.
Satisfied, a pint was swiftly ordered: his first taste of a new Bristol beer as newborn Bristolians continued getting their first taste of the world just a few hundred yards away.
The Robin Hood, 56 St Michael’s Hill, Kingsdown, Bristol, BS2 8DX
Main photo: Martin Booth
Read next:
- A-Z Bristol Pub Crawl: The Open Arms, St Michael’s Hill
- Lost & Grounded to host seventh birthday party
- Bristol Beer Factory to invest £80,000 in local community
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