Status : Closed
38 lisburn road
Bob Cratchit’s is a new licence granted to Croft Inns in 1987. The bar takes up the entire ground floor of the former Russell Court Hotel. What a lovely approach; up brown tiled steps, along a tiled ramp and into a beautiful glass conservatory with appropriate greenery and fan shaped comfortable settees. We then pass a traditional red working telephone box as we enter the spacious tiered bar itself. This is a most unusual delightful theme Bar. The theme here is Dickensian and built around a Dickens character named Bob Cratchit who featured in ‘A Christmas Carol’. Right in the heart of the bar is a life-sized figure supposed to be Bob Cratchit himself sitting at his high desk. It’s very tastefully done with imitation mahogany desks doubling up as tables, high desks with tall chairs in another and all with imitation drawers. At the rear are 8 real leather settees. Adorning the panelled walls are Dickensian prints and a couple of antique typewriters. John Dixon, Croft’s operation manager informed me that the computerised lighting in the bar was something special. The lighting changes every half-hour. Every light is on a dimmer, medium in the morning rising to bright at lunchtime, back again to medium in the afternoon and early evening and rising to a crescendo around 11 o’clock in the evening. The public bar adjacent to the conservatory is again well designed with its solid brown tiles and rows of drawers interspaced with mirrors below the marble topped counter, while behind the counter are rows of drawers, many of them open and illuminated with coloured lights producing pink, blue, purple and green hues, interspaced with shelves containing books and old antique bottles. Croft’s management has paid great attention to the view from the windows which features a high bank of shrubs with its 40 shades of green.
The Russell Restaurant is reached by a separate entrance. It is very trendy with its cocktail shaped mirrors and light blue neon palm trees, ideal for more couples than singles . . . Congratulations to the designers Michael Gibson Associates.
A lot of thought has gone into the construction and design of this very pleasant theme bar and it clearly shows, so the next time you’re looking for an excuse to get out of the house, tell the wife you’re going down to ‘the office’ for a few hours and she’ll probably believe you.
Incidentally, it was Charles Dickens who coined ‘red tape’ to describe petty officialdom. He was referring to the tape used to tie documents and the like.