A wild and wet Sunday afternoon coast walk this January left us yearning for the reassuring comforts of a steadfast south Devon pub as the cold winter night set in. Happy memories of past visits to the Mussel Inn meant that this would be our pub for the evening. As we stepped through into the pub it became immediately apparent something was wrong by the music speaker parked in the porch playing a particularly unpleasant Simon Cowell style song. Rather than been greeted by the traditional warmth and atmosphere created from 600 years of serving locals, myself and my friends became confused for a moment that we had walked into Happy Eater M5 cafe that had made some attempt to create a village pub, or was it a local Indian restaurant stripped of everything Indian and replaced with a poster for Belfast Shamrock Irish whiskey. The cozy pub was now a long tunnel of bizzarre striped chairs, empty tables and soulless decor. The draft beer was the usual suspects that one finds in chain pubs across the country.
To be fair the menu looked interesting, an attempt to source meat from well known local Moostone farm should be noted, but prices were far from cheap averaging £14 a main. The atmosphere, or absolute lack of it meant we were certainly not going to eat and give our hard earn't pounds to this establishment. Surely there must be laws against the cultural rape and desecration of old village pubs like this. read more
