THE 'hard work is paying off' for a Bradford bar nominated for a Telegraph & Argus award.
The T&A recently launched its Best Pub 2024 competition.
Readers were asked to share their favourite drinking establishments - and a fantastic 6,389 nominations flooded in.
The nominations were narrowed down to 10 and we have now started the process of profiling each of the finalists.
Today we are highlighting the Symposium Bar & Kitchen, on Albion Road, Idle.
“It’s brilliant,” said Stacey Pedley, owner of the Symposium, about the nomination.
“It shows that all of the hard we’ve been putting in over the last year-and-a-half is paying off.
“We took over in April 2023 and then opened in May.”
The pub, which had been known as the Symposium for many years, has been called the Idle Beerhouse and The Terrace in recent years.
Stacey said: “I’d been coming here as a regular for 12 years before we bought it and we had always called it the Symp, so it made sense to take it back to the way it was and call it the Symposium.
“We decided to buy it because we didn’t want to lose our local.
“It’s taken a lot of hard work but we’ve got a nice little pub with lots of lovely regulars. We’ve some good fun.”
Some of that hard work included the transformation of a downstairs storage area into a new ‘secret garden’.
“We’ve made some drastic changes to get it looking like how it is now," said Stacey.
“We opened our secret garden on June 14, and the pub was very, very busy during the Euros.
“We can host private bookings in the secret garden, and we’ve had more and more throughout the summer.
“We always wanted to do it up, so we did that project earlier this year and it took us eight weeks to complete.
“We’ve been using it as an outdoor seating area.”
Stacey said the Symposium, which had previously been known as a real ale pub, has got back to offering real ales under their ownership.
She said: “We always offer Yorkshire Blonde, which is popular, and one guest ale.”
Stacey also said the bar offers a Sunday roast in addition to themed food nights where they have served tapas-style food from countries including Spain, Poland, and India.
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