Old Swan – Abbot Street, Wrexham — Restaurant in Wales

I can’t fault the food - this is a bar, not a restaurant 😁

We are celebrating our honeymoon in Wrexham here from the US and ended up on an inadvertent pub crawl on Saturday night. We stopped into the Cross Foxes and it was…dull and not interesting so we walked back out. I told my husband that we should check out The Old Swan if for no other reason than the entrance is down an alley and I loved all the irreverent writing on the windows and walls.

Upon entering we were greeted by Alicia behind the bar. This place is small. It’s a bar. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else. We parked ourselves at the corner and ordered drinks. 7 HOURS later, we finally left after meeting much of the family that owns the Old Swan including Alicia’s sister and their aunt, Karen. My husband used to work in the restaurant industry and had a lively conversation with Karen about the bar lines. The lines are crystal clear and are cleaned every week. If you have worked in bars in the US, many of them smell sour from all the spilled booze that isn’t properly cleaned. There was no such smell here and we could tell that everyone takes pride in the place. There were waves of patrons who would come and go over the evening, regulars and strangers alike.

By the end of the evening, we felt like family ourselves and we know that this will be our “regular” spot this week and on...

I'm comparing this to the Old Swan of many years ago, but this place has changed for the worse.

Friendly service but beer was foul and overly gassy. Music was insanely loud for a deserted bar. The few people there chose to sit in the freezing cold in the yard rather than damage their hearing inside. Several customers turned around and left a soon as...

Pints were nice and reasonably priced. They had a good condition pool table to play on with a £5 deposit, as most places in town have. Stacey behind the bar was welcoming, friendly and very...