Large and popular modern pub on Southampton's main street. Yates is very similar to Wetherspoon in layout and in cheap meal deals and cask beers. Main differences are less choice of beers, large sports TVs, and piped music. There are also evening DJs and quiz nights. The window seats are popular, so the tables are a bit close together, but there's plenty of room elsewhere. The pub is popular during the day with young working class families, as well as older couple and friends; then during the evening it attracts students and hen parties.
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| Ambience |
The beer selection is OK. There are seven hand pumps, with one of those for cider. On my visit two pumps were not available. I had the Fullers Swing Low, which was not entirely fresh.
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| Beer selection |
All in all I found the place to be workable. Attractive meal deals, and cask ales with ample seating, and the music is kept low. If in town with the family this is an acceptable spot for lunch as the two nearest Spoons are both a little walk away.
Date: March 2019 Score: 5
Popped in on a Saturday afternoon with the family. We sat by the window. which offers a pleasant view of the park across the road, but is too near a speaker for the sports tv, which meant we had difficulty relaxing and conversation was a bit difficult. There may be other places in the pub where the tv is not so loud, but we found it rather off-putting. There was no cask ale available at all. All five of the casks were off. There was a cask fruity cider available. It is bad management to have no cask ales on. The pub was not so busy that one of the staff couldn't pop downstairs to change a barrel. The only rationales would be a) that there was no one in the pub trained to change the barrel (poor management) or b) the pub had completely run out of cask beer (poor management - that would be like a chip shop running completely out of chips - you need to keep on top of stock management). When our food was brought to us we were given five forks (for the three of us) but no knives. A small error, but it took time to fix as the cutlery is kept in the kitchen and needs to be requested and waited for. All this was compounded by the fact that the table we chose to sit at is awkwardly placed such that it is difficult to get in and out. Not a good day for Yates, and overall not a pleasant visit.
Date: May 2019 Score: 3
113-117 Above Bar Street
Southampton
SO14 7FH
Southampton
SO14 7FH
Open 9am - 11pm (later on weekends)
Food 9am - 9pm
Family friendly
* WhatPub
* Yates
