Cider Press

Came here Monday lunch time to a pretty quiet pub. The staff were friendly checking up on us during the meal.
I ordered the all-​day breakfast. It would’ve been better if I could swap out my bacon, but what I got was not bad quality. A little tight in the tomato, and beans. It came with 2 white toast, 2 eggs, 2 pork sausages and chips. £6. The fish and chips was average for £7. Frozen chips (which were cooked OK) and too thick batter buried the fish. The mushy peas were standard. Could’ve been better.
Sitting by the window and watching the street life was relaxing. Can’t speak for the busy times. Still looking forward to finding a great (chain) pub menu. This was not quite it.

Yes it’s a scream pub but at least it’s not too luridly yellow on the outside. The décor is pretty standard and what you’d expect from a Scream pub, but in my opinion this chain is the most agreeable good value drinking option in town.
Much more atmospheric than Wetherspoons, at least there’s music playing and a lively studenty atmosphere. The food is calorific and poor quality, but definitely fills a hole… especially when you’ve got past the point of too many drinks on an empty stomach.
Although it’s far from the nicest pub on Gloucester Road, its high-​up location makes it an ideal stop on a pub crawl when you’re starting to worry about how swiftly your wallet is emptying.

A classic student haunt, this Scream pub makes a great start to a night on Gloucester Road. As with the rest of the Scream chain, this pub has quirky design features, plenty of random stuff on the walls and a menu that wont break the bank.
Monday night is £1 a pint (ish-​some prices have gone up a little) and there are various food and drink promotions on throughout the week including ‘two for one’ on typical pub grub. The epic Scream Brunch is essential for curing a hangover, there is apparently a plate buried somewhere under the eggs, hash browns, chips, sausages, tomatoes, bacon, toast… I’ve seen full-​grown men be beaten by this breakfast before.
The feel of the Riser, as it is affectionately known by local students, is slightly dirtier than it’s Scream sister, The White Hart on Park Row, the sticky floors and tables being a case in point. While by no means a classy establishment this pub does serve a purpose of a cheap place to kick start your evening and there are plenty of large booths and tables for larger crowds.

The first point I would like to make about this pub is that it is definitely more geared towards the student market! So if you are a student it is a brilliant place to grab some food or have a few drinks, but it’s probably not the kind of place you want to take the family!
Undoubtedly the best thing about this pub is it’s great value for money! You can get two typical pub meals for £5.50 — that’s just £2.75 ahead! The food is fairly standard and nothing to write home about, however for this kind of price what can you expect — and it definitely fills a gap!
The most popular night for students here is a Monday night, where the pub puts on a weekly ‘pound a pint’ night which guarantees to create a busy environment! I would like to add though that on this night they have put the prices up to £1.25 a pint, where they used to be a pound — but with the increasing prices of alcohol everywhere else I guess this is fair, and still crazy cheap for a pint of beer in a pub!
The Rising Sun is a great place to spend an evening with your friends, and on a Monday night it is extra fun — everyone is in the party mood and often people head out to town after hitting this hotspot! So as a student this pub is without a doubt worth a visit!

The Rising Sun is a staple student venue and it feels as natural to come here as it does brushing your teeth in the morning. If you’re not a student (or tax dodger as Mark kindly puts it) then you won’t really want to be here. By day it the sunlight shows the Rising Sun to look like some sort of pornographic set — think velvet curtains, red carpets and boudoir lighting. By night it is heaving with people — drunk people. The alcohol is cheaper than chips which is the pub’s mainly pulling-​point. If you want to get drunk and quick, head straight over to the Rising Sun.

This is one of the Scream chain pubs, not that you’d notice. It has a good local vibe. There’s a decent pool table, with space to play your shots (£1 a game) and a wonderfully innovative music video jukebox. This makes it a great place to bring people with diverse taste. My other half opted for a bit of Ace of Base, Amy MacDonald and Alisha’s Attic (he obviously didn’t get past the As!). Being a Scream pub you can get a discount card which makes the drinks cheaper. I got one when I graduated. It cost me a fiver and lasts me forever. It saved me that amount in the first few days! The Rising Sun also does decent and reasonably priced pub grub. It recently hosted a Ciderfest where it had up to 40 different ciders available, including the potent Old Rosie and the brand new (at the time of writing this) Tutti Frutti flavoured Brothers pear cider.

The only reason why I ever go in here is because my good friends live in the apartment above so it makes a handy port of call if we all run out of alcohol on a night out. Its drab, dreary and really dirty. I felt like I needed a good exfoliating scrub after I ordered a drink here.
Everything has that disturbing sticky feel to it, and the people in here are slightly odd. During the day it is full of old men who have nothing better to do than stand in a circle in silence leering at the unfortunate souls who enter. When evening hits, the students start to crawl in simply for the insanely cheap alcohol. I do not no one person who comes here for the entire night, it is just a one drink affair before moving swiftly on.

As part of the Scream chain, The Rising Sun is formulaically decked out in the standard issue yellow paint and caters purely for students. So if you’re not a student, I really don’t know why you’d want to enter.
It has the usual suspect beers on tap, nothing fancy and it’s food is cheap and extremely basic. There are big sofas, big screen TV’s here and there for live football and the odd pool table and electronic pub quiz games next to the traditional fruit machines.
Not recommended for people looking for nice food, good beers or continental lagers, a civilized atmosphere or pleasant flagrant smelling bathrooms. Most things you touch are a little sticky, plus it’s filled with young and extremely annoying tax dodgers.

You should ask yourself a couple of questions before entering this sports pub. Is it Sunday afternoon? Do I like football? Are there seats available? Do I have time to walk somewhere better?
Basically, unless you’re looking to get your footie fix on a Sunday afternoon, there’s no real reason to come here. It’s a busy, non-​descript Scream pub with pool tables, TV screens and a jukebox. As I no longer qualify for cheap booze, I no longer go. And, I suppose, that’s the way it should be.

Student pub central, this is a fun, boisterous night out. It’s usually heaving with the two pool tables in demand and people squashing themselves onto seats. To give you a flavour of the place; people seem to buy pitchers here a lot. The groups doing this then quickly becoming loud, perhaps get another round in, and then charge out to get their next drink a bit further down the Gloucester Road.
You may well have to wait ages at the bar. This certainly isn’t the staffs fault, who don’t seem to stop moving all night, but can be irritating nonetheless. It also encourages the buying of doubles, chasers, etc. You of course then end up drinking quicker, and eager to get the next round in. If you want somewhere where you’ll probably end up drinking a bit more and a bit faster than you’d expected (something I rarely want to do…), then go to the Rising Sun.

Nicer than the average yellow card/​scream pub. The décor through the back is great, and the food is typically pretty good and dead cheap.
The beer is ok, but you come here for the prices really.