With the return of indoor hospitality it’s a chance for us to get back to our favourite pubs in Leicester and Leicestershire. One of those favourites has to be The Two-Tailed Lion on Millstone Lane.
The award-winning pub has a fantastic range of craft beers, has a pizza pop-up every Friday, regular quizzes, and is a little city centre gem. We caught up with them for this week’s BID Spotlight to find out about all of their plans.
How has it been at The Two-Tailed Lion since reopening?
We’ve been very lucky to have been able to have some external seating for the pub that allowed us to show we’re still here and allow our regulars to start getting back to normal. The bonus of this was more people have walked past and noticed us more because of our larger frontage. We’re very thankful for the support from everyone, new and old, as even with our limited seating and sometimes miserable weather, people have still made the effort to join us.
Have there been many changes you’ve had to make inside the pub?
Fortunately no. Being in such a lovely old building with many features it would be awful to change anything in the building drastically, so everything we do is to highlight them and marry them to our more modern design features. The only minor changes we’ve had to do is replacing our plants that may have missed a few days of water with us being closed!
How would you describe the Two Tailed Lion to someone who’s never been?
Something that I personally have always loved about The Two-Tailed Lion, even before I started working here and when I was just a regular, was how different people and groups saw and used the lion. It seems to me that it is a perfect pub for so many different communities and all of them are welcome and aren’t out of place.
We have the regulars, locals and families who love to come and bump into a friendly face and just socialise with people they only know from the Lion. They give it a real village pub feeling in the middle of a city. We have the young professionals and office workers who love it as a little oasis for them to do some work at lunchtime or have a quick beer before going home. We also have the craft beer and cask beer aficionados who come knowing that we will have a different selection of beers and spirits than anywhere else and trust that we can recommend a beer that they will appreciate.
What I can always guarantee people who come, is that we will always be welcoming of whoever and that we will always have an interesting and different selection of keg beer, cask beer, wine, and spirits!
What did you miss most over lockdown?
I definitely missed socialising with all the people that come through the pub. The best part of working in hospitality is meeting so many different, interesting people and listening to all their stories. Sometimes it’s like working in a sitcom and it makes the days go by so quickly, laughing all the way. Being closed and locked down meant we didn’t have the opportunity to make sure our little community was ok and coping with quite a difficult year. Now we’re open we’re so glad to start seeing all these familiar faces happy to be back.
I also certainly missed having a pint of well kept, cask conditioned beer, poured well into a glass. There’s just no good alternative without going to a pub.
What plans do you have for the coming months?
We have some really fun things planned for the next few months. We’ll be finalising dates from June onwards for events that we are personally curating and planning to give some new experiences. Some of these include:
A Tour of British Boilermakers. This is where we’ll pair different styles of beers with Whisk(e)ys from around the British Isles exploring how beer and whisk(e)y share common characteristics and how English and Welsh Whisky shouldn’t be overlooked!
Wine and Leicestershire night. Pairings of different foods from Leicestershire with wines from around the world showing off the best of local produce and enjoying it alongside some of the best wines we can source.
We also have our 3rd Birthday on the 22nd June which hopefully ties in perfectly with restrictions easing and we’re currently planning to make sure it is definitely a week to remember. We’ll be revealing our plans for this a little bit closer to the date.
What are some of your favourite beers you have on at The Two Tailed Lion?
With our constantly changing selection we get to have and try so many amazing beers in so many different styles. We always make sure we keep our fridge stocked with cans and bottles to take away and enjoy at home. Some of my favourites we’ve had are beers from Verdant Brewing and the Amundsen Dessert in a Can series which are like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate factory.
We’re also very lucky to get all the new and exciting Framework Brewery beers when they come out which is exciting from a local brewery in centre of Leicester.
Who are some of your other favourite Leicester independents?
First and foremost we absolutely love having Martin Bros. Pizza resident with us. They are lovely to work with and their pizzas make The Two-Tailed Lion even better for it. They’re currently with us on Fridays and their Neapolitan pizzas are just insanely good. Everyone should have burrata on their pizza.
We also love being on Millstone Lane with The Blue Boar as it gives our little area such a nice little community of beer drinkers and some friendly competition for the CAMRA pub of the year awards.
I also really enjoy spending time at the Bottle Garden in St Martins Square. They support us frequently and it’s amazing to see an independent Leicester based bar be so successful and improve the night life in our city.
Where can people stay up to date with everything you have on?
We keep our our Facebook and Instagram updated regularly and all our events will be displayed at thetwotailedlion.com where any events tickets will be available as well.
Our BID Spotlight features are brought to you in collaboration with BID Leicester.
