The Pear Tree, Roath

The Pear Tree, Wellfield Road, Cardiff, CF24 3PE, Roath

Open all day from 0830

The Pear Tree is an unusual modern polygonal building on the corner of Albany and Wellfield Roads. The pub has gone under other names previously, once it was Bar Billabong – an Australian-themed pub and before that it was 42nd Street as this was the last film shown in the Globe Cinema which used to occupy part of the site that now forms the Pear Tree. The pub has been extensively refurbished both outside and inside since it’s incarnation as an Australian theme pub, today the Pear Tree Café Bar is much more like a traditional pub with bare wooden floors and stripped pine tables, wooden settles and couches. The dark red-brick of the old Bar Billabong has been rendered in an off-white covering to give it a lighter, more pleasant appearance.

A central feature is the spiral staircase that leads up to the first-floor level with views across to the road to the Victorian church opposite. The spiral staircase also leads down to the basement toilets or, alternatively there are disabled toilets on the ground floor. There is plenty of wood panelling and shelving in the pub which are used for books for customers to enjoy. Daily papers are also available for customers to read. Old and somewhat eccentric photographs are on the walls and there is free WiFi for customers to use throughout the pub.

The dark wooden bar is on the left-hand side of the pub features two gleaming chrome handpumps with Brains Bitter and a house beer ‘Grumpy Landlord’. Wales largest cask ale brewery SA Brain also use the Pear Tree to put their keg craft beers on so that the wheat beer Weiss Weiss Baby and the American IPA Barry Island IPA have been on tap here. SA and SA Gold are also available in bottles along with some of their bottled craft ales. All the beers are served in the new branded glassware from Brains Brewery. Alternatively there is an extensive wine list as well as a full range of coffee.

Food is served all day from 0830 to 2200 with extensive chalkboard menus with breakfasts, tapas and flat bread or sour dough sandwiches and burgers available.

The Pear Tree regularly hosts live music and is also home to the Pear Tree Bake Off – a charity competition to find the best home baker in Roath. The Pear Tree markets itself as a café bar but appeals to a wide range of clientele as customers of all ages enjoy this pub.

Street view has the pub as it looked when Aussified:

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Four Elms, Roath

Four Elms, 1 Elm Street, Roath, CF24 3QR

Open all day
The Four Elms has recently been refurbished and reopened under its original name after years of being know as ‘Bar YK’ and before that as the ‘Yellow Kangaroo’. It once proudly boasted that it was ‘The only Yellow Kangaroo in the world’ although why that is something to boast about is not at all clear.

Above: Bar YK pictured in 2011The building dates back to 1859 when it had three bars, two public rooms and stabling for one horse, over the years all of these areas have been knocked through into the one open-plan pub we see today. The pub gets its name from four distinctive elms that were once local landmarks but were felled in 1901 in order to widen the road. The Four Elms was previously a Welsh Brewers pub and later owned by Scottish & Newcastle but is now owned by local pub company JW Bassett who have refurbished this old building to bring it into the twenty-first century.

Above: Plan of the Four Elms from 1899

Glamorgan Record Office

The two-storey street-corner pub is painted in black and white and features a colourful display of flowering plants in hanging baskets outside. The corner door leads to an open-plan bar area with the wood and red leather panelled bar counter on the left-hand side of the building. Four gleaming chrome handpumps serve Felinfoel Double Dragon, Sharps Doombar. A cider from Westons and a house beer, Four Elms IPA, also brewed by Felinfoel of Llanelli. This is a rare Cardiff outlet for Felinfoel Brewery and their beers are served in branded glasses. A premium lager, Peroni is also available, together with a selection of wines. To the side of the bar is a dartboard, with the awards the teams have won on display.

There is plenty of seating in the Four Elms with high tables and stools towards the front and bench-seating and tables towards the rear. A pool table is also present in the pub. Towards the rear of the pub, a raised seating area in the former stables features embossed wallpaper and a large-flat screen television, used for major sporting events. Elsewhere in the pub it is decorated with old photographs of Cardiff, including one dating from 1897 which shows the four elm trees that gave the pub its name. Large mirrors with ornate golden frames help make the interior light and give the appearance of it being more spacious.

The smoking area is at the rear of the pub and this leads onto the huge pub garden which must be one of the biggest in the City with bench seats and parasols to allow the customers to make the most of this sun trap.

Food is served 12-2.30 and 4.30-9 from a menu that features a range of food from pasta and pizza and grills, including a 32oz mixed grill. Portions for children are also available. Sunday lunch from the carvery is available 12-5 with booking advisable for groups. Other meal deals include a pizza night on Thursdays, steak night Wednesdays and a curry night on Thursdays.

Free WiFi is available and the Four Elms also features a function room and skittle alley.

The Pub is still marked as Bar YK on Streetview

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Albany, Roath, Cardiff

Albany, 105 Donald Street, Roath, Cardiff, CF24 4TL
Open all day

The Albany is a welcoming Brains pub, set on a corner of a late-Victorian terrace in a suburb of Cardiff which is popular with students. It can be difficult to find the first time, but it becomes easier the more you go here. This is a two-bar pub with a smart, comfortable lounge to the front and a popular, partly tilled, rear section that leads to a beer garden. The front bar has old stained-glass windows with the Brains AI logo set in blue and white glass, which add to the atmosphere of this pub which was built in 1895. 

On the walls are some of the many awards the Albany and the staff have won over the years, from SA Brain 'Manager of the Year' to Cardiff CAMRA 'Pub of the Year', this clearly is one of the best pubs in Cardiff. The Albany is popular with students and locals alike and, along with a lot of other pubs owned by SA Brain, offers free Wi-Fi access. An old Brains price list from 1940, framed and mounted on the wall makes interesting reading.

 The beer range is from SA Brain and Bitter, Dark, SA and SA Gold are all served on gleaming brass handpumps, together with two regularly changing guest ale, from breweries such as Adnams or the Brains Craft Brewery seasonal. The fact that Brains are willing to showcase beers from other breweries alongside their own excellent products is one of the reasons this pub is so popular with customers. The Albany has been a regular pub in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide for a number of  years and there are stickers and posters both inside and outside the pub to advertise this fact to customers.

The rear bar has Sky Sports on televisions and photos of local sporting teams adorn the walls. More traditional pub sports are not forgotten as the Albany has a skittle alley and dart board as well as running a quiz night on Tuesdays and a Karaoke on Saturday nights. Smokers are also catered for with the rear heated beer garden, which can be a sun trap in the summer. There are not that many outside areas in Cardiff to enjoy a drink in, so the garden at the rear of the Albany is a welcome change to drinking inside in the summer.

Food is only available lunchtime from 12-2.30 Monday-Saturday and the Welsh Black Beef curry is a favourite on the menu.
The Albany in Roath is more than a 'street-corner local', it is a multi-award winning community pub serving superb real ales and offering something for everyone with the two-distinct bars. Here's to the next 117 years!

Google Map:

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The Crofts, Roath, Cardiff

The Crofts,  14-15 Crofts Street, Roath, Cardiff, CF24 3DZ

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 Situated in a residential area of Cardiff, the Crofts was built in 1957, replacing an earlier pub known as the Crofts Hotel that dated back to 1867 but had been destroyed during the Cardiff Blitz between the 2^nd and 3^rd January 1941. Built out of brick, today the Crofts is a two-story street-corner pub with sash and dormer windows and is slightly larger than the original building on the site, the rebuild encompassed two neighbouring properties that were also destroyed. Originally owned by local brewers Hancock's, the Crofts later went into decline under Welsh Brewers and a pub company before an enterprising local company bought the pub and have set about improving this back street community local.

The Crofts still retains its original two bar layout, with an impressive wooden front door leading to the surprisingly large bar area with its red leather-coloured settles, tables and bar stools. There is even room for a dartboard in one corner. This public bar is also home to Crofty, an African Grey Parrot whose whistles and calls keep the customers and passers by amused in the warm weather as his cage takes up a doorway to the side. In the colder weather, a wood-burning stove is situated in the fireplace. The bar itself is carved out of mahogany and the dark wood panelling extends around the door frames and above the bar. The original deeds to the plot of land the pub was built on are framed and mounted on the wall of the bar.

At the moment, only one real ale is served and this alternates between the house beer 'Parrot Beer' and guests such as Sharps Doombar from Cornwall and Charles Wells Bombardier, a rare outlet this far West for the Bedfordshire Brewery.

A door to the left-hand side of the bar leads to the toilets and, more surprisingly to a wooden-clad skittle alley. This area will be used in the future for exhibitions from local artists. The corridor also leads to the lounge/dining area which is also accessible via the glass fronted doors on Partridge Road. The lounge features plenty of seating and on a wall is a large photo of Winston Churchill waving as he was driven past the bomb-damaged pub on his visit to Cardiff on the 14^th April 1941. The pub can be clearly recognised by the Hancock's Toastmaster sign hanging from the wall.

At the rear of the Crofts is a patio area that features a covered smoking section.

At the moment the Crofts only does food from 11-3 as well as Sunday lunch, wherever possible local produce is used with allotment-grown fruit and vegetables being utilised alongside other locally-sourced ingredients such as fresh fish delivered daily.  There are set menus featuring pub favourites as well as home-made specials on chalkboards which change regularly but can feature such favourites as Pea & Ham Soup and Turkey & Ham Pie. Vegetarians are also catered for with Glamorgan Sausages and other options available.

This Thursday (07.07.11) will see a Players, Poets and Pints night with free admission. More details via Facebook here.

Google Map:

The pub is on the corner of Croft Street and Partridge Road, the Google Map is only slighty out!

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