Corner House Hotel

You're walking up Heaton Road past the shops and suddenly you've found yourself a proper community hub that happens to do decent grub and rooms upstairs. The Corner House feels like the kind of place where everyone knows the bartender's name, and they'll remember yours after one visit. It's a Greene King Inn, so you know what you're getting—reliable, unpretentious, the sort of pub that's been serving the same crowd for years and isn't bothered about reinventing itself. The rooms are straightforward and clean if you need to stay over after a night out, and the kitchen does honest pub food that won't surprise you but will satisfy you. This is Heaton as it actually is, not as some tourism board imagines it.