What's the difference between a pub and a bar?
Plus pick of the week - The Old Coffee House, Soho
Someone asked me the other day the difference between the two and it turned out to be harder to answer than I thought. There are obvious signs, like the literal sign. The Red Lion, The White Hart, The King’s Arms etc. These are pub names. But they don’t have to be, there’s no hard and fast rule about that. At least not that I know of. And there are pubs with names that sound positively un-pub. The Pelican, Skehans, Old Shades.
They tend to be old, sure, but where isn’t in London. There’s also plenty of new ones popping up all the time. So then is it the inside? Pubs will usually have a few ale pumps on the mahogany but these could easily be decorative with the decline of the once-popular draft. There might be a fireplace in a pub, but you get the occasional confused Caffe Nero with a disingenuous fireplace sometimes. If you’re lucky, a pub might have traditional patterned carpet but I think we can all agree that can’t be the difference, can it?
Then there’s the boring stuff like the licensing. Pub is short for public house and many are owned by bigger, institutional breweries like Greene King or Fuller’s. But the independent pubs, free of these breweries, are often the favourites with tangible identities and decades of dedication dripping off the walls
Essentially, it’s a blurred line. Even though the term bar is somewhat adopted americanisation, it applies to the majority of venues in the UK now that the pub doesn’t dominate the local and national drinking landscape.
So what is the difference?
Unfortunately for those who lean quantitative, it lies in the feel of it. Most British and Irish people will be able to go into a place and know whether it’s a pub or not. For example, there are those imitation English or Irish pubs in America that just feel…wrong. They’re close but it feels like a set, like the walls might fall down to reveal a camera crew with fake posh accents. I’m sure it’s similar for Americans experiencing our takes on saloon or country bars - without the lived experience growing up in these places, it’s hard, not impossible, to mimic the essence of them.
For the question at hand, we settled on a truism - that entering a pub feels like coming home whereas entering a bar feels like going out.
Which is exactly how it feels walking into The Old Coffee House in Soho.
People have opinions on Soho. Strong opinions. The most common condemnation is that it’s a tourist trap, which it is. But Soho is alive, it’s the most alive part of London, the big lights from the movies, the living history of Chinatown, the gay district, the theatre district, Covent Garden, the river. The density of it is insurmountable. You could go to a different place every day and it would take years to do it right. There’s always an unvisited basement, a 10 seater upstairs theatre, a rickety 1800s boozer to go to.
Or a 1700s one. The Old Coffee House is small in the way that Gandalf is never late. It’s exactly as small as it should be. You dip your head into the slightly leaning doorway, the pub more a part of the land than the too-level street outside. It’s covered in memorabilia and tat hangs from every inch of the walls and ceiling. There’s well-worn red, patterned carpet from front to back, and a rounded wooden bar curving its way across the opposite side. The chairs and stools are tiny, the tables are close together, there’s a soft smell of spilled beer, cigarettes, and piss. There’s no menus, just whatever is visible from the bar itself including the laddered pork scratchings nailed next to the till. The lighting is soft, all tasselled lamps and fairly lights from Christmases gone by. It’s not built for summer, or for cocktails, or big meals. But it is built like a pub.
Once you’re in there’s no implied pressure to leave, to spend your money and get out. Mind you, I’m not saying this is what bars are about, but I am saying it’s what pubs are not about. Pubs are meant to be your third space, your preferred living room, a comfort zone. It helps that they’re old, it’s difficult not to feel a connection to the past when you know how many generations have rounded the same bar, laughing with the same feeling of ease and contentness. The Old Coffee House is not pioneering, it is not groundbreaking, it is not going to serve you anything to write home about. But all of it together - the history, the feel of it, the decor, the intention, the staff, the regulars - it’s more than the sum of its parts and that sum is absolutely worth writing about.
Bisoux xoxo