Review

The Faun & Firkin is always busy due to its close proximity to Leicester Square, although it languishes in the slimy, stinking thoroughfare that is Bear Street - watch your footing, or you’ll slip on your ass on the putrid grease that virtually oozes from the kitchens opposite! Fortunately the pub itself doesn’t reek of rancid cooking and the floor isn’t awash with stale, used fat, although your feet have a tendency to weld themselves to the grimy, wooden floor.

A faun is a half man, half goat creature, and there are certainly a few faun-like, goatee-bearded, dreadlock-sporting, unwashed, student types rutting away in here. On the contrary, the nearby tourist haven ensures there are plenty of other mythical bodies in attendance: angels, fair-maidens falling prey to the goatee charms of the horned ones.

Once upon a time – as all the best myths begin - the Faun & Firkin was filled with plush sofas, had a great atmosphere and was patronised by classy drinkers. Nowadays the sofas have been replaced by vast tables, ensuring maximum drinkers can be crammed in, and big-screen sport has replaced the ambience, catering for the Aussies and South Africans who clamber in to watch a variety of sport in which England are the inferior team.

Take the stairs past the photograph of the old-geezer with the monstrous snout and visit the tiny mezzanine floor overlooking the entrance. From here you can speculate at the chandelier and sizeable porn painting on the wall; a Faun clearly intent on some indoor sledging, a bit of how’s-yer-father with a leggy blonde – there real material on the picture, giving a lame 3D effect.

As with this type of pub, there are barrels to place your drinks upon, although unusually an extra ledge has been added to the barrels here. If you fancy a game of pool at the pool tables that takes up 95% of the mezzanine floor, you need to "See barstaff for equipment". Join the queue behind the faun from the painting who's at the bar asking for his equipment, the love-truncheon the artist forgot to give him, which he is now in dire need of as he’s on a promise - the blonde in the painting having made him hotter than a fresh-fucked fox in a forest fire. Whilst on the subject of fires, if there’s a fire here whilst your enjoying your drink, you’d better hope that you’ve got enough left in your glass to douse the flames, as all that remains of the upstairs Fire Extinguisher is the mounting it hung upon, which itself is hanging off the wall!

Nothing exceptional about this pub, it’s just a relaxing Firkin pub in a very central, busy location – definitely one of the better hostelries on Leicester Square and worth a visit if you’re too lazy to go anywhere else. If you’re not visiting The Zoo next door for cocktails and to admire the gold puke on the walls, then this is the best pub on the Street; the Bear & Staff, a few steps away, is an awful place and doesn’t even enter the equation (visit here instead, every time).

Review by mr_psm