Castle Hotel — Restaurant in Manchester

Your Friday night has led you here. More whiskeys than you can count have passed your lips and you feel the need for a different type of intoxication. Just a fleeting digression from the hard liquor. A pint is what you need. The Castle Hotel seems like as good a choice as any. From the outside it looks like your kind of establishment. Dark with a warm glow. The bouncer looks you up and down. You look back with fake sincerity. He permits you to edge in through the narrow door. It's crowded inside but in a good way. Everyone seems to be friends. You shake the momentary thought of talking to someone new and carefully navigate the bodies crowding the bar. Ale. This should settle your stomach. The barman places your potation in front of you. A brief moment passes as you watch the head settle. Someone behind you pushes their arm under yours to claim their space at the bar. Your companion, you forget her name, motions towards the back of the building. She wants a smoke. You want a smoke. You follow her down a narrow corridor, past stairs winding up to the distant sound of a jukebox. A band plays a lo-fi version of Otis Redding's "Don't Mess With Cupid" in a side room. It reminds you of your father. The church of smokers is all the way at the back. It's small. No, tiny. Barely a patio but it'll do. You pick a vacant spot but are slowly forced against the wall by the tipsy congregation. You don't say a word. People always have their back to you anyway. You don't mind. You have enough space to drink your pint and suck down the sweet taste of toasted tobacco. That's all you want. Your companion makes conversation with a nearby couple....

Do not visit this pub.

First, the good stuff. We visited on 13th April. A good selection of beers. Warm decor. Cosy. We sat at the bar, discussing a range of subjects: music, identity politics, culture, etc. No vulgarities. All above board. All very civilised. Now the bad stuff. Unfortunately, the bar staff listened in on parts of our conversation and instructed the doorman to eject us. It played out like this. The doorman, out of the blue, approaches us and asks us to finish up and leave. Confused, we asked why. He replied that we had to leave the premises first before he could give us an answer. Yep, really confusing. As we were about to leave, my chair was kicked and one of the bar staff (a female wearing a Slipknot t-shirt) began hectoring us from the other side of the bar, although I couldn’t hear her due to the general background noise. We were told by the doorman outside that staff disliked our conversation (or those fragments of it that they monitored).

The Castle Hotel. A place where your speech is monitored by a coterie of miserable-looking bar staff. If you value your privacy rights, then do not visit...

This is a lovely venue and on a Saturday night leading up to Christmas was absolutely packed to the point of creaking. It feels like it hasn't had any love since the 70s and some people will like that as it has authenticity and thus far has avoided the constant wave of gentrification.

There are several little alcoves peppered throughout the place that people were gathered in enjoying a chat and a pint.

As far as live music goes the venue was on the ground floor, easy enough to find and would hold at best 60 people uncomfortably and 40 comfortably. The stage is tiny. The acoustics were very good and I thoroughly enjoyed my night there. Two bands played when we were there- local Mancunian outfit The Happy Soul (Very decent and well worth going to see on their own) and a fantastic American band hailing from Asheville, North Carolina called River Whyless (Fantastic full sound and made...