My heart sinks when I see pub links sent to me via Beerintheevening.com. The whole name seems both derivative of the much more friendly Fancyapint, whilst wholly misunderstanding what makes a phrase like Fancy a Pint so friendly. More importantly I sometimes like beer at other parts of the day. On top of all of this, the Beerintheevening website is stupendously ugly, and cluttered up with punter reviews which might have come right out of a BBC website Talking Point. You get the drift, i don’t like Beerintheevening.com, and the only use of it I eve rhave is directing people to pubs not covered by Fancyapint. Which up until now has been pubs in Zone 7.
Well all of this may well change as Fancyapint, who previously have restricted their geographical bent to London, is embarking on a brave project to go outside of London (Fancyapint UK). At the moment they seem to have four in Glasgow, two pubs in Edinburgh and five in Brighton – which is not exactly expanding their stock. But they are looking for reviewers who can help: and whilst Fancyapint reviews have often been idiosyncratic, their ethos of what makes a good pub is closer to ours (and Pete Brown’s) than, say, CAMRA’s. Something to watch in 2007.