Having recently arrived in Manchester, I realized I needed to find a local pub that I could call my own. I wanted to find as close to the perfect pub that I could within easy walking distance of our flat… But that leads to the important question, what makes the perfect pub? In my mind, it’s a place with hygge. The kind of place you could enjoy while a British winter storm rages outside; where you could chat with old friend or make new ones and the regulars know you; somewhere that feels like a true Third Place… But how do you quantify those into something that can be measured or compared.

After overthinking it for far too long, I came up with five criteria. First, do that have cask ale? This is fairly common in the UK, but still worth noting, especially if they have only or mostly cask ale. Next, does it have a fireplace. It’s August as I start this quest and expected to be 30° C tomorrow so we have no use for this now, but when the hypothetical storm arrives in November, it will be wonderful. Third, is there recorded music playing? This is a “reverse point” because most of the better pubs I can think of don’t play recorded music and if they do, it’s fairly quiet. If the pub is blasting the latest Top 40 at 85+ dB, it’s going to loose a point. Live music, doesn’t could against them.

The final two criteria are more subjective and look at how other people would rate the pub and are measured on a 0-2 scale. First, what would granddad think? This is not necessarily what my granddad would think, but more about the platonic ideal of grandfatherliness. Would he feel comfortable ganging out there? A night club with strobe lights and loud music scores a 0, while a place where I’m one of the youngest there scores a 2. Finally, what does Morgan think? Since she will likely be joining me more often than not, her opinion of the place is important. When I asked her what she’s looking for, she said, “Um… I duh know… is it good?” Well, fair enough, that’s basically what I said when I started this. For her, a 0 means she doesn’t want to go back, a 1 she’d be fine returning to, and a 2 means we definitely need to go back there.

I’m sure I’m missing some very important criteria. What else would you look for in a pub? Let me know below and I’ll look at updating the scoring system.

Details:

With the rough rubric sorted, we started our quest at the Crown & Kettle just down the road. It was a warm day with people spilling out onto the picnic tables out front. Once inside, the highly decorated vaulted ceiling is what I would picture for a 1920’s bank, but no longer kept at the level of “bank shine”. Good selection of beers and about a dozen ciders which seems unusual to me. Maybe they’ve gotten more popular since I last lived here? All beers were listed on TV screens and the one in our corner was a bit small for all the beers (granddad would have had a hard time reading it… unless I was leaning on the bar, I had a hard time reading it). My phone started acting up so I didn’t get any photos, but hope to include those in future updates. I also saw that they have a brewery Tap Takeover at the end of the month, so that will be worth going back to check out.

Score:

Cask: Yes (+1)
Fireplace: Didn’t see it (0)
Recorded Music: Yes, loud outside, but not too bad inside (0)
Granddad: I wasn’t the oldest and I certainly wasn’t the youngest (1)
Morgan: She loved the cat clocks on the wall. None of the tails were swinging, but she still thought they were cool (2)
Overall: 4 / 7 — Not bad and about where I’d hope our first pub landed, with room to move in both directions. Overall, it’s close and we will definitely be going back but we’ll have to check out other first. Time to keep exploring Manchester.