Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

The Old Brewery Bitter here comes out of oak casks in the cellar, which is a way of keeping beer almost nobody in Britain still bothers with.

Why go

For the room, and you should know that going in. CAMRA rates this interior three star on its National Inventory, "a pub interior of outstanding national historic importance" (CAMRA), which puts it on a very short national list. The building was rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire, there is a vaulted late-17th-century cellar under the courtyard, and a 1991 extension took the pub to at least nine drinking areas over several floors. The two small rooms either side of the entrance passage are the ones that earn the listing: old panelling, bench seating, a huge fireplace, a Victorian counter, and a notice over the door from less egalitarian days reading "Gentlemen only served in this bar."

Then there is the drink. Samuel Smith's of Tadcaster bought the pub in the early 1990s and it "serves their one and only real ale" (CAMRA). The venue puts it the same way: "All beers are brewed by Samuel Smith's at the Old Brewery in Tadcaster, Yorkshire which was founded in 1758" (venue). One brewery, one cask beer, no guests, nothing that changes. The kitchen runs a chop house, with the steak and kidney pudding as the dish it puts its name to, and menus dated April 2026.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Old Brewery Bitter, because the oak-cask serve is the one thing here you cannot get down the road. Then the steak and kidney pudding if you are eating.
• Avoid: treating this as a beer stop. The tap is tied to one brewery. Skip peak hours too, since the rooms worth seeing are the smallest ones.

What locals & experts say

• Ruth Hargreaves, Londonist, on what a Sam Smith's tie means at the table: "As a Sam Smith's pub, the food and drink range is unexciting but inexpensive." ref She left London in 2017, so read that as a verdict of its time. Nobody has published a better one since.
• Jake Missing, Editorial Lead for London at The Infatuation (October 2024), on the crowd: "this sawdusty medieval bungalow along Fleet Street is as popular with tourists as it is with beardy CAMRA types and office workers sinking pints." ref His outlet scores London pubs by the dozen and filed this one unrated, under its own stated policy for places it wants to revisit before putting a number on them.
• No chef has named it. All 622 rows of the London industry-recommendation record were searched on 1 August 2026 and no working cook picks this pub.

Good to know

• Where: 145 Fleet Street EC4A 2BU, entered down Wine Office Court. A pub with a similar name sits round the corner, which catches people out.
• The ruling, stated plainly: this row sat in the Destination band because a spreadsheet said Icon. The evidence for that band does not exist. The history is real and the cooking has never been rated by anyone; both facts are in this entry.
• Where the real send is: for cask in central London walk to The Market Porter at Borough, which runs a big rotation, or Old Fountain on Baldwin Street.
• Timing: all day into the evening, and it is a City pub, so it empties when the offices do. A Sunday menu is posted.
• Booking: walk in. Function rooms are bookable.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, City of London, inspected 22 January 2025. Components 0, 5 and 0, where higher is worse. Clean. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Jeff saved this pub with no note. His raw saved-places export carries an empty Note for the row, so nothing above is in his voice and no order is attributed to him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Go for twenty minutes on a Fleet Street walk and drink one thing. The room is genuinely one of a short national list: CAMRA rates the interior three star on its National Inventory, 'a pub interior of outstanding national historic importance', in a building rebuilt in 1667 with a vaulted cellar under it. Then weigh what is actually in the glass. Samuel Smith's bought the pub in the early 1990s, sells only its own Tadcaster beer, and puts one real ale on, the Old Brewery Bitter, drawn from oak casks in the cellar. That last detail is a real craft fact and it is the only one. There is no guest tap, no rotation and no programme, so the beer is neither moving nor deep. On the food, Ruth Hargreaves wrote the only verdict anyone has published: 'the food and drink range is unexciting but inexpensive.' The Infatuation, which scores London pubs at volume, filed this one unrated. Age earns nothing here. For beer in this city, walk to Old Fountain or The Market Porter.