When I went off to university, I noticed something. And it wasn't until I came back for that first Christmas holiday that one of my friends voiced it. "Haven't you noticed that you have a much higher alcohol tolerance than everyone else?" We all had. And that night, in the pub - of course - we pondered why. And we came to the conclusion that it was coming from St Albans, a town with more pubs per square mile than almost anywhere else in the country.
Possibly.
There sure are a lot of pubs in St Albans. I have my favourites and my least favourites, and then a list that's bigger than both of those of pubs I've never made it to. There are many. So it's easy to lump a lot of them in together as 'old man pubs' or 'scary local pubs' and completely miss it when they have a much needed makeover.
That's exactly what's happened to
the Great Northern Pub, which is one of several pubs up London Road. It's right next to The Odyssey, the recently refurbished cinema, but I'd never even realised it was there until I noticed last year that they'd had a lick of paint and were featuring some tasty looking food on their Instagram. I mentally made a note to pop in at some point, but they beat me to it a few weeks ago when they invited me to their new menu tasting. Everything was absolutely delicious - like, so, so, SO good and also with loads of unusual but great flavour combos, like lemon drizzle cake with fennel - that I couldn't wait to go back for a full meal. Luckily for me, they invited us back. Hooray!