Estate pubs, of course, occupy a special place in pub fandom. Being integrated into the fabric of a residential (often Council-built) estate makes them peculiarly close to the lives of the residents, and often makes for a more cosy and welcoming environment, if always with the danger of a hostile reception for outsiders. You never can quite be sure. Cask, which opened in mid-2009 as a renovation of the old Pimlico Tram, is classic estate pub from the outside: dark and forbidding, squirreled away at the foot of a fairly ugly post-war residential block. However, inside the space has been opened out, with light streaming in from large windows at the right of the pub, the walls painted brightly and decorated with maps, and plentiful cushions lining the benches.

This in itself could be the prelude to some hideous gastro-pretentious makeover (the place is worryingly called “Cask Pub & Kitchen”, and the particular shade of green adorning the walls isn’t exactly comforting), but where Cask excels is in the range and quality of beers they offer. Five handpulls which offer dependable and ever-changing stand-bys like Dark Star ales and the Everard’s Tiger which provided our group sustenance all night on our first visit. Add to this a vast range of German and Belgian bottled beers, and a few ciders, and you’ve got… well, something that’s starting to sound like ad copy, but I’m trying to get across that this is a good pub in the hinterlands of Zone 1.

I use the word “hinterlands” advisedly, as of course it’s not so far from civilisation (aside from the tube station, the pub’s not exactly a stretch of a walk from Victoria), but somehow Pimlico remains a corner of central London which just seems cut off, a quality exploited by Ealing Studios in its 1949 comedy Passport to Pimlico. Perhaps this is due to its primarily residential character (rare enough in central London), or perhaps because it’s physically cut off by the train lines into Victoria, but then perhaps it’s just because those of us who go out drinking can’t reach our homes so easily from there.

Therefore, the fact it shows up on this list is a sign that the pub is getting something right, and it’s why we’ll be finishing up there on our annual pub crawl this year.

(Cask on Fancyapint.)

The Spirit Group (the managed arm of Punch Taverns) have, however, waded into the murky territory of food science, which they should really have left to the experts. Their winnovation is not to throw the word ‘posh’ before things but instead ‘vegetarian’. Now of course, in theory I applaud this. As a (recently lapsed) vegetarian, British pubs have been excellent in offering choices for those who do not wish to eat dead animals, albeit within the strictly limited repertoire of the pub menu as mentioned above. At its most unadventurous this may mean offering a green salad, or replacing meat with Quorn wherever it appears.

So if Punch Taverns wish to substitute fish with cheese (halloumi in this case), I can only be intrigued. Halloumi is a sturdy cheese, one that doesn’t melt easily, so would seem to be ideal for this project. The problem is in the execution. Three very large chunks of halloumi have been battered and deep fried. This is already too much for one digestive system to bear, but it also strips the halloumi of its distinctive salty taste and squeaky texture.

Ultimately, if I hadn’t already left behind my vegetarian resolve, eating this hideous slight to the glory of both fish and halloumi would surely have started me questioning the faith. I can only think that Punch bears some grudge against vegetarians. Can we have the Quorn back now?

(Incidentally, the pub we were in, the Imperial, is not one that appears on the Top 25 list, but it was on the shortlist. For the area, just off Leicester Square, it’s a comfortable pub which offers a pleasant environment for a pint of ale, especially now that they’ve removed the TV screens. Just be wary of that menu.)

It was for the most part a horrible place, filled with ersatz gothick decoration (think thick cobwebs, chains, rusty steel cages, big fake spiders, book cases, and lab testing equipment), a meagre range of drinks and truly awful music played far too loudly which didn’t even conform to the rest of the pub’s decor theme (generally, it was bad AOR rock music).

And yet, and yet, a bit of nostalgia creeps in for the old place. It was like some branding consultant’s idea of the student drinking experience, all-caps and underlined, with bright ‘cocktails’ made from cheap vodka looking for all the world like a terrible Aftershock experiment. It was an oasis of dependability, for some value thereof, in a desert of despondency. It was certainly preferable to the Green Man across the other side of Oxford Street, itself every bit as loud and obnoxious. It made ridiculous claims about the quality of its food, “best in Soho” it said on multiple sandwich boards outside, cue derisory laughter: it was in Noho ahem, Fitzrovia.

And now it’s being converted by Geronimo Inns as The Adam & Eve (after the little alleyway that runs behind it). They run a few decent drinking places in Heathrow Airport, as well as the Betjeman Arms in St Pancras, locations which should suit them well to the transitory environment of Oxford Street. But it won’t be the same, really. It won’t be the same kind of naff that Oxford Street really deserves, that can stand proudly alongside the t-shirt sellers wedged into Adam & Eve Court and all the cut-price discount stores.

(* Eerie Pub fans in London can console themselves with the London Stone, opposite Cannon Street station.)

Where is the bar boldly stepping into the breach which advertises itself to the passing crowds using huge photos of Bernie Madoff, Alistair Darling, Sir Fred Goodwin and other bêtes noires of the global financial meltdown? Surely we can order at a bar made out of cassette tapes, bottles of beer stacked haphazardly behind it in their bulk-purchase packaging? The walls, where they are left clear of teetering towers of alcoholic detritus, might feature a series of paintings of a smug Gordon Brown? There might even be an Ikea-bought wendy-house seating area upstairs complete with bean bags? And it will need a manifesto taped to the door.

Well, now, thanks to Vince Power, we get the bar we all deserve. Should we choose, that is, to venture into the anti-capitalist enclave of Notting Hill.

Local real estate agents’ posters at Ladbroke Grove tube station, nestled like the bar under the vastness of the Westway, tell us that “Yes! You can afford to live here!” There might as well be a poster saying we can afford to drink here, too, since prices for all drinks are set at £2.50. The place is hardly packed, but it’s a Tuesday evening and the volume of the music means everyone who is there is drinking outdoors. But we’re being made “aware of the political and economic situation of the day”; you can’t put a price on that. Though it was probably a fair amount. Bean bags are quite expensive, if you’ve ever thought they might make cheaper seating options.

It may lack irony in its striving after Dalston cool, but in its way it comes across as much a temporary art installation as the bar on the roof of a car-park in Peckham. No surprise, then, that students from the University of the Arts had some involvement. It’s called LiquidNation, but lose a single camel-case letter and you might get a sense where the future of the recession-themed drinking den lies.

The battle over the future of pubs is being fought, as we’re constantly reminded in the media. You can judge the healthiness of a pub in many ways, but one surely has to be its range of potato products.

Packets of crisps are getting ever more rarefied, as Walkers are forced out from some higher end establishments by competition from Salty Dog, Tyrrell’s and some brand that only sells their stuff in little cardboard boxes as I spotted in an East Dulwich pub the other week. You can pay over £1 for some of these brands.

There’s also the bowl of chips, which just could be the new battleground in the fight between community boozer and gastropub. One might berate £3 or £3.50 as being simply too much, except that given the escalating price of a pint in many such places, this is generally less than a beer costs. Plus, you can still justifiably consider yourself short-changed if you get scarcely more than a handful.

And now, from a recent visit to the reliably posh White Horse in Parsons Green, the bar has been raised yet again. No triple-fried hand-cut muck for these people. Only the finest “crispy new potatoes” served intermingled with capers and olives.

Though would it be heresy to suggest I liked them? Under £3 and more character than some of the pub’s habitués.

The venue for those drinks, the Lord John Russell, is always a dependable place. It’s popular, certainly, though not usually completely rammed. It has friendly staff. It has a great selection of well-kept ales — so many, in fact, that the pump handles form a formidable physical barrier across the bar. Plus, it has pies and crisps and pork scratchings and Smith’s Bacon Fries: everything you need to enjoy your pint with, in short.

More intriguingly, it now turns out to be at the cutting edge of beer innovation, for, courtesy of Budvar, it has a third mixer tap for its Budvar Original and Budvar Dark beers, entitled the “Half and Half”.

Of course, this may not be such a recent innovation. Not only is this apparently common back in the Czech Republic, but this very site has presciently already documented such a combination (verdict: not great). Perhaps a mixture between the Budvars would improve it?

The dedicated mixing tap isn’t even new though, as a Budvar press release makes it clear that the Half & Half tap has been in place for the better part of the last year at a bar in Croydon — named, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Half and Half. The deepest southern purlieus of London may not be beyond Freaky Trigger’s ambit (some of us have fond memories of the Half & Half’s former incarnation as Beer Circus), but suffice it to say, the innovation did pass us by when it was merely Croydon-based.

As for Budvar itself, their blonde lager has been a standby for me whenever I’m in the mood for a lager and it’s available on the bar, a dependably refreshing drink, and if it’s a little unexciting, it’s surely better than any homegrown alternatives. Budvar Dark is, though more rarely sighted, a far tastier lager, toasty and rich yet still sprightly on the palate.

Surely mixing the two, as some commentators suggest, would create a whole greater than the sum of its constituent parts?

Well, not really, though you may of course differ. It’s certainly an attractive burnished colour when poured, and has a bit more taste to it than the regular blonde, but it’s not the sucker-punch of lager greatness I’d been led to expect, and I’d tend to go for a pint of the richer Budvar Dark over it. Or indeed, a pint of tasty ale. The Wadworth 6X was on fine form that evening.

Still, this Budvar innovation is certainly not unwelcome, surely more so than some other brewers’ indifferent efforts. And we can only hope to have more to taste test in future, as it’s been a few years. In fact, do feel free to pass on any news of further innovations from the beer world. Otherwise, we shall just have to consider relocating to Croydon.

To some observers, Chilli & Chocolate was the most interesting flavour idea of the original six — one of the few that hadn’t been done before in some guise. Of course, the reason for that should surely be obvious: crisps are an inherently salty food, and chocolate isn’t. So how this might work out is the issue under consideration. As the blurb on the back says, it “sounds crazy, but is so TASTY! And as Catherine ['from High Wycombe', the 'creator' of this flavour] rightly points out, what more do you want from a bag of our crisps?!” If it provided what is modestly promised, then that question might remain unanswered. But it doesn’t, and it won’t. I would like some more flavour, please.

To be fair, there’s no shortchanging with the chilli. The problem is the chocolate: the flavour is too subtle. And depending on which pack you’re eating, you may get an intense hit of chilli with nothing else, or you may notice a bit of the chocolate. The ones I had at home were very much chilli dominated, but when I ate some that a work colleague bought, the chocolate was more noticeable. That’s part of the problem, though. The balance is such a precarious one that there’s no guarantee you’ll get anything more than just chilli, and we’ve got enough choice of good chilli-flavoured crisps already (Walkers’ own Thai Sweet Chilli is pretty decent on that front).

A more sensible match to the crisp form is thus surely Fish & Chips. After all, a salty and partially potato-based staple of British cuisine would surely lend itself well to a salty potato snack? And the thing Walkers are hoping to discover with this competition — a strong and distinctive flavour that can hold up to the classics like salt & vinegar — must surely be in the offing?

Well, no. There is nothing that can prepare you for the supreme foulness that is Fish & Chips flavour crisps. I speak, admittedly, as a vegetarian, but as one with fond memories (and occasional wistful daydreams) of a good fish and chips. This flavour, however, is only destined to haunt my nightmares, and I wonder — because I like a narrative which is neatly wrapped up — whether that can be blamed on the vegetarian-friendly seasoning that is used to create this flavour. Probably not, though. Fish is just too overwhelming a flavour.

Both, then, in their different ways, manage to fail — spectacularly so in the latter case, in this reviewer’s opinion. Not only would I not order these crisps, but if they fetched up in front of me in the pub, I wouldn’t eat them.

In the interests, then, of food science, it falls to Freaky Trigger to ask the question: when next we go down to the pub, will ANY of these flavours pass that ultimate test and be selected ahead of ready salted, salt & vinegar or Cheese Moments? I do so love Cheese Moments.

First up, randomly pulled out of a multi-pack bag, comes Builder’s Breakfast. The anthropomorphic graphic that adorns the pack suggests a smiling face of fried eggs, bacon and sausage, with a tomato for a nose. That’s a whole tomato. I can’t claim to be a builder myself, but I’ve had a fair few greasy spoon fry-ups in my time (rather shortening my time, I should say), and a whole tomato has not usually been part of the deal. It may have been chopped in half and fried or grilled. Sometimes it’s just a plum tomato from a can. A lot of the time, it stays on the plate at the end.

So is this what “Emma in Belper” might get were she to venture down to, say, Del’s Diner and ask for a number one set breakfast? The back of the pack suggests buttered toast as another of the key flavours (while omitting any mention of the sausage), and that certainly seems fair, if we’re not allowed to have a fried slice, or even some chips. And where are the beans? They hold a full English together: they are necessary. Surely this is no cooked breakfast fit for anyone, let alone a builder?

We should be thankful at least, that after that minor controversy a few years ago about their advertised salt content, Walkers aren’t serving us porridge with organic honey flavour.

So what is it like? On the nose, a strong smell of bacon, but not much else, to be honest. However, eggs dominate the initial bite, giving way to a very slight hint of tomato. That may be just imagined: you can get away with a lot by using a bit of suggestion. “Buttered toast” flavour may have been a bit of overreach, though: I’m not buying that, unless the eggs have been mopped up by it before that first bite. The interesting thing is that when the packet is gone and has been accidentally knocked on the floor by the next round of beers, the bacon flavour starts to assert itself. It’s a definite aftertaste, and it doesn’t go away quickly.

They’re not, then, unpleasant to eat. But a builder’s breakfast? Well, having polished off a packet, my girlfriend asked me to brush my teeth before she’d let me kiss her. So perhaps they can be called successful?