The Bolton (Bar)

Top 10 things you need to know about The Bolton pub:

1) Draw a circle and call it the Natural History Museum. Draw another circle overlapping the first and name it Chelsea Football Club. Now draw a third, called Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre, that overlaps them both. That tiny bit in the middle of your Venn diagram, that’s The Bolton pub.

2) The close proximity of these three institutions provides reason for the wide differential in the pub’s punter quotient.

3) It’s not all museum tourists, football fanatics and event goers either. A variety of denizens occupy this mathematical subset: proud rugby fans come to bellow at big screens; culture vultures stroke collective chins at poetry readings; musos (occasionally) mosh on live music Fridays; fancy dress Cinderellas stroll through the bar from the free-to-hire room upstairs; and Eastern Europeans gather for London’s most hotly-contested Russian quiz. This large, unpretentious West London pub is an infinite problem solver.

4) It’s an everyman pub, taking the derivative laid back O’Neill’s vibe it once was and multiplying it by the dark-wood, retro-artwork, cosy log-fire of a country boozer, bisected with enough low lamps, leather booths and exposed piping to keep the industrialised city folk from total negative segmentation.

5) The composition of draught beers maximises variable behaviour. Despite names that might better suit a heavy metal band, moorishly strong pints of Lawless or Long Hammer result in a high probability of oblique conversational tangents.

6) The Bolton’s menu equates to a linear pub food approach, in that it lacks lateral experimentation but compensates in sheer mass. The portion dimensions are voluminous and you may struggle to minimise three courses in one sitting, even with an ambitious hunger.

7) The apex to our dining experience was manifest in the slow-cooked BBQ beef short ribs which were charred on the exterior, tender in the interior, and adequate solution to the aforementioned hunger.

8) The burger and perfunctory chips were possibly beta prototypes and would’ve performed a fraction below commonly expected levels for London burgerology were it not for the additional bacon jam: a must!

9) The bar staff and manager completed several circuits of the pub’s circumference on our visit, interacting with all parties in a cordial manner, leaving zero opportunity for dissatisfaction to arise.

10) The above experimentation was merely a hypothesis based on a small percentage of possible sequences. Further investigation is definitely required....read more