Purecraft Bar and Kitchen comes across as an effervescent blend of toothsome grub and chilled beers at every instance. The beer range is excellent, with more than 20 beers on cask and keg and over 80 bottled beers at any one time. With specials like fish and chips and scotch eggs, their food menu is designed to complement the choice of your beverage. Being located close to the Birmingham New Street Station, this place gets quite lively every evening.

As the name suggests, the front of Post Office Vaults is painted red like a post box but once you get downstairs you enter a light colored room, where beer samples are kept at the counter. Food is not available here, but people are welcome to bring in their own snacks. This craft beer bar showcases a variety of beers whether cask ales, keg-brewed or bottles from small brewers around the world. They are now up to 250 different beers on offer and the search for more continues.

The Jam House is backed by ex-Squeeze keyboarder and TV presenter Jools Holland. The club is spread over three airy floors, the top one being an open-plan restaurant serving modern world cuisine. The menu is set, although it changes regularly. Music, however, is the driving force with live acts nightly, and even a traditional Louisiana gospel brunch on Sundays.

Island Bar is an irresistible combination of continental cocktails, excellent live music, cool furnishings and boundless pleasure. A wide range of classic spirits and tropical tiki drinks offered by the finest bartenders are its major pull. The special attraction of the Island Bar is its cocktail masterclasses and demonstrations that enables you to see the craft that goes behind the making of a drink.

A flashy, stylish bar and restaurant for the new millennium, Sobar brings utilitarian chic to the Arcadian Centre. It calls itself a Noodle Bar, a phenomenon springing up more widely these days, and serves deliciously spicy, genuinely fast food to business people and the fashionably lazy alike. It has a bright, clean and nice interior and you can choose to eat at tables or at the well-stocked bar. Either way, you can see your meal being cooked and it arrives with frightening haste.

Bank has remained one of the most popular and highly-regarded restaurants in the city, attracting a mix of customers as well-polished as the cutlery. It is a large eating and meeting, wheeling and dealing sort of place, accommodating 250 diners in some style. The food is excellent and includes homey staples like sausages and mashed potatoes alongside more contemporary fare like Thai-style seared tuna. This is also one of the few places in Birmingham where you can get fresh oysters.

Moseley's most popular pub, patronized by students and locals of all social classes. It's very traditional in appearance, with one main bar and a couple of cozy back rooms, and has a solid range of well-kept beverages (notably Burton Ale). A tiki bar garden, cigar room and great selection of cask ales make the Prince of Wales a draw for locals as well as a few celebrities from time to time.