Alehouse Rock

Down a block from the power plant, on that stretch of Fair Oaks Avenue where you begin to speed up in anticipation of the Pasadena Freeway, John Bull Pub is a cavernous dark-wood restaurant set in a simulated Tudor-style house, alive with the requisite pub smells of spilled ale and fried fish. A dozen or so paintings of bulldogs decorate the walls, also heraldic lions, griffins, Union Jacks, that sort of thing, and the requisite scattering of royal portraits hang toward the eaves.

If you were in Notting Hill or Paddington, you might have your choice of pubs like this, men at the counter slumped over pints of ale, rather too much Rod Stewart on the jukebox, the usual busy-bar buzz punctuated by the regular thunk of darts hitting home, but this may be the only British bar in the Los Angeles area that feels more like a pub than like a theme park of British culture . . . right down to the dental work on some of the regulars.

The food at most pubs in England has always been secondary to the company, the usual pub menu--cheese-and-bread ploughman’s lunches, Scotch eggs, potato “crisps” made pungent with malt vinegar--something that fully justifies everything ever muttered in a dark moment about British food. The important thing is the beer.

And John Bull Pub serves some of the best beer around, the usual pints of Bass and Harp and Guinness, sure, but also the hand-drawn draughts of Real Ale that never seem to make it anywhere else. Witness the wonder of brewing that is Newcastle Brown, less a beer than some dense, dark country bread miraculously drawn into a glass, tapped with a special hand-pump that injects just enough air into the uncarbonated ale to produce a tickling spritz and induce a head the color and texture of thick, unpasteurized cream. If ever there were a reason to make a bar your local, it would be these pints of Newcastle Brown.

The food seems authentic, peas with everything, chips or mash, though too much of it (especially the many, many savory pies) seems to have seen the inside of a microwave. Sausage rolls taste good, gently spiced ground pork baked in something like self-contained bun units, but re-heating has made the pastry clammy and tough; the beef-and-vegetable filling of the turnovers called Cornish pasties is homey, nourishing, but is similarly encased in tired dough. The filling of steak-and-kidney pie, braised in sweet Sherry, has the characteristically strong organ taste long beloved by friends of Leopold Bloom; the beef and mushroom pie, filling cooked in Guinness Stout, is fine, though it is possible to wish, again, that the crust be tender and crisp.

But the fish and chips are everything you could wish for from a British restaurant, sweet fillets of North Sea cod, enrobed in a light beer batter and fried to a delicate crunch, served with a little pill cup of freshly made tartar sauce and a pile of decent steak fries. A half order, the “tiddler,” is just enough to take the edge off a pint of Newcastle without leaving you too heavy for darts.

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Where to Go

John Bull Pub, 958 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, (818) 441-4353. Open daily for lunch and dinner. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Full bar. Lot parking. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $9 to $17.

What to Get

Fish and chips. Newcastle Brown ale.