Bittles Bar

The wedge is not a design flourish. It is what happens when a Victorian building has to fit the junction it was put on, and Bittles has never been remodelled to pretend otherwise. The frontage is narrow and painted, traditional in the plainest sense, and it looks much the same as it must have done a century ago.

Inside, the geometry does the work. The room tapers, the ceiling sits lower than you expect, and there is no comfortable way to stand in a group of more than four. Plenty of pubs feel small because they are busy. This one is small because the plot is, and it is the better for not fighting it. The windows carry stained glass in the Victorian manner, which is easy to miss on the way in and worth a second look on the way out.

The portraits are the reason most people remember the place. Irish writers, actors and political figures, painted rather than printed, covering most of the available wall and leaving very little of it bare. There is no plaque explaining any of it and no attempt to arrange the collection into a theme.

The effect is that a first visit takes longer than a pint does. People stand with their backs to the bar working out who they recognise, which in a room this narrow means everybody shuffles round each other. That is part of how the pub works rather than a fault in it.

Cask beer is the draw, with craft alongside it and a decent spirits selection behind the bar. There is no food, so this is a place to drink and talk rather than to make an evening of. Anyone after a meal will need to plan around it.

Timing matters more here than in a larger room. Early on it is calm and genuinely tucked away, which is when the artwork is easiest to look at. Later it fills quickly, and because the space is so tight a moderate crowd feels like a full house. Neither version is the wrong one, but they are not the same pub.