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A Good Meal and a Decent Pint (reproduced from the Winter 2005-6 edition of O-to-K)

The College

138 Northgate, Wakefield

The College is a spacious and comfortable 2 room pub with a Brewer's Tudor exterior; the public bar kept its traditional sawdust floor until health & safety forbade it. It is handy for the North side of the city centre but once inside you are unaware of all the bustle. It’s owned by the Union Pub Co., part of W & D. The College used to have Banks’s and Mansfield on handpump, but now if you want cask ale your choice is Marstons Pedigree. This had a good balance of hops and malt, which, as I was pleasantly surprised to find, was not over-chilled.

When I called in, the pub had barely opened its doors as eager customers, office workers and shoppers, started to place their orders. There’s a wide choice, and depending on your meal, the accompaniment may be fries, wedges, mash or rice. It’s hard to spend much more than a fiver unless you pig out on a mixed grill or a minted lamb shank, with sandwiches, toasties, baguettes, jackets. Mains include the ubiquitous wholetail scampi, tex-mex, chilli, and fajitas. If you can’t make up your mind the menu offers lots of opportunities to have a bit of this and a bit of that - that’s me, so I picked one of 3 combos, a burger (made from proper meat) with chicken breast smothered in tangy barbecue sauce of which I did not waste a drop, accompanied by grilled tomato and a mountain of wedges.

You can’t try everything on the menu, but with a bit of ear-wigging I picked up “That Chicken Tikka: you ought to see it - it’s great”. The service was friendly, and the wait was under ¼ hour for freshly cooked, still sizzling food, in such generous portions that it’s a wonder they ever sell any desserts.

Food is served 12.00-14.00, & 17.00-19.00 on weekdays, with Sunday lunches 12.00-17.00.