Bar Essentials: The Hightown Hotel

Where
Lower Alt Road, Liverpool, L38 0BA T: 0151 929 2650

What's the story?
Originally a hotel proper, the Hightown Hotel is essentially a late Victorian mansion and now a multi-purpose pub owned, for the last 10 years, by Geoff Miller.

It is two steps away from the Northern Line, which means it is easily accessible to the world.

In theory, Czechoslovakian stag parties can fly into John Lennon Airport (“Above Us Only Sky*TM”) and get on a bus and then a train here for a massive sesh,  clad only in Dukla Prague away kits.

Here is where the River Alt meets the sea. Here Fort Crosby once housed Italian and German PoWs. Now, Altcar rifle range keeps the shore sealed off. Thus, most days, it's the racket of rapid fire gunshot from modern automatic weapons that can be heard above the cries of the Canada geese way down the Mersey coastline.

Apart from this, the Hightown Hotel is one of only four excitements in the district, the others being the pharmacy, the Post Office and the bread and wine store.

Why go there?
If you live in Hightown, see the last sentence.

For others, like us last Sunday, it is a handy place to park your bike if you happen to have embarked on the 20-odd mile Sefton Coastal Path. Come here when it's bleak, wild and windy on the dunes to best appreciate the warmth and buzz inside. Cheap food is the attraction for many who travel from far and wide.

What's yours?
We sampled some very well kept Directors from one of nine cask ales ranging from £2.55 to £2.75 a pint. There are 10 wines to choose from at £9.95 a bottle and six lagers. Dive in, it won't just be your front wheel that's wobbly when you leave.

The roast boast
This was intended to be a Sunday Dinners review. As we mentioned earlier, the price of food here is a big draw, with two Sabbath beef roasts for an astonishing fiver. This has to be the best value anywhere. By the time we got our act together (around 4pm) they had long gone. But not to worry, they could do us a turkey and a lamb roast dinner for a fiver apiece. We duly ordered, but no chip and pin machine exists in The Hightown Hotel. “The nearest cash point is in Formby,” we were informed.

With two ravenous kids who had cycled miles to get here, it would be hard news to break. Luckily, in Hightown, no one can hear you scream.

See a penny, pick it up...
Crestfallen, we emptied our pockets, scrabbled around a bit and came up with enough coins and a couple of notes to feed four of us and get the ale in too. We went back to the bar. “Aha!” we announced, like triumphant students in a taxi, but not soon enough. Roast dinner, any of it, was now pronounced “off”.

Think again
The Pound and a Penny deal is no more. Inflation has seen prices go up a whopping 150 per cent, meaning that you can eat here for £2.49 a head at best. All day, every day.

For this you will still get a perfectly good sausage, egg, chips and beans, or an ok-ish Holland’s meat and potato pie with chips and peas, and a heap more variations on the theme. At this price point it's never going to be gastronomic, but it's not astronomic either. You really can't go wrong.

From the 2 for 1 section of the pricer menu, however, it seemed we could.

A £9.99 sirloin steak was thin, gristly and one for only the most experienced, habitual masticator. How did we like it done? Who knew? We weren't asked. In fairness, the best chef in the world could not have put this specimen right.

Meanwhile, that promising hearty pub staple, steak and ale pie (£7.95), was neither ale or hearty.

The beef was sparse and two waterlogged whole mushrooms waited to explode catastrophically, like a stray grenade from the barracks, once bitten into. Until then, they bobbed ominously in a thin gravy which simultaneously managed to have no flavour and yet leave an unpleasant aftertaste. Its cocoon was a suet-like crust which was grey, thick, hard with all the delectable appeal of a bank vault's walls.

What's the craic?
The big attraction of the week is the Tuesday night quiz where the winner is rewarded with six bottles of wine. Afterwards there's the chance to win up to £300 cash in the raffle.

Entertainment-wise there is a pool table thoughtfully situated away down some stairs away from the main bars. There is a fruit machine, and several TVs for Premiership football and other big events are placed strategically high and out of the way. Above us only Sky, indeed.

Dogs and kids are welcome to be well behaved too, while you muse over all the newspapers or find out what's happening on the unofficial village noticeboard.

Bits are a little tatty, such as the toilets, but on the whole it's spotless.

Worth mention too is Merseyside's biggest beer garden, overlooked by a charming period wooden verandah that makes you come over all colonial as you lie back and think of England.

Verdict
Despite reservations about some of the food – the bargain sausage, egg and chips definitely won the dinners  – there is much to recommend the Hightown Hotel. 

It keeps its beer well and its friendly atmosphere ensures a steady supply of regulars are kept well too.

Knees up, everyone.