Anne has written a great review of a couple of pubs in Exeter, it is in the context of where a bunch of us should meet on a regular basis – but is a good read none the less:

Georges Meeting House. It’s near town, it’s not too hard to park quite near to it, it’s a Wetherspoons, so the food and drinks are cheap – but that’s also the problem, the food is literally cheap. On a few occassions, people have ordered a meal with chips, and the chips have been cold/barely cooked/still resembling potato, and when sent back they have returned very obviously microwaved!! Not very nice! It is a big place, with lots of tables for two or four people, so when a group of possibly 15 people (if not more) come along, seating is a bit of an issue. We normally have fun rearranging the furniture, but this normally results in a long thin chain of table, which means unless you get up and wander around (and get in other peoples ways), you are kind of stuck talking to the people you are sat near to – so harder to get to know new people.

Mount Radford. Nice atmosphere, one side nice to sit and eat in, but then they started having a quiz on Sunday evening, and after being part of it the first week, no one was keen to be part of it again. The other side of the pub has three pool tables, which kept people entertained (and provided an ice breaker/something to watch). There was parking nearby/in the local streets or people from St Leonards or Belmont could walk there – and it was possible to walk from our house. The problem here is that the pub stopped being able to provide food in the evening. They would only ever serve food until 9pm – so if you were doing set down it was a bit of a rush. Then the time got earlier and earlier, so if you weren’t there by 8.20 you probably wouldn’t get any food, and there would be less choice anyway. Then there was no food left on the Sunday evening. One of our group had a chat with the manager, and was told that the brewery would only let them have a delivery on Monday and Thursday, so by Sunday evening they’d used all the food and there wasn’t enough storage stage to order in larger quantities. The only thing they could offer was for them to go to the local spar and buy a bag of frozen chips to cook us! Hmm, but then we would have to pay their price for the chips!

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