Address: 3 Romsey Road, Winchester SO22 5BE

Telephone number: 01962 890018

Website: http://www.myspace.com/stjamestavernlive

Date of visit: 26 April 2010

Approximate cost per head: £10

Comments on wine list/beer: Several excellent beers on tap including the rare Butcombe range. Pretty good wine list for a pub from £12. You can even get bottles of champagne (Moet at £45)

Summary:

An excellent pub up the steep Romsey Road. There is regular “live” music – see web site.

You can have soup and pate to start with at £3.95 and £4.95 respectively.

There is a whole array of sandwiches of the traditional type, beef, ham, cheese etc at £5.25 and if you want it as bread with the meat/cheese on the side with a salad, its at £5.95

They also serve jacket potatoes with the traditional filling – chilli, beans, tuna melt at £5.95

The main courses are priced at £7.95. My friends and I had the fish & chips, cottage pie and ham egg and chips.

The ham is served sliced thin not a chunky cut – so its probably out of a packet. I had the fish and chips, served with mushy peas and a not too vinegary tartar sauce. The chips were great, but the batter was not the traditional batter – very much like the mazo meal versions that you get at Golders Green.

The truth is that you come here to drink and the food is not bad and it’s fairly cheap compared with Reading, Oxford or London.

Eddie