About us
We travel together. We write separately. And we eat our way through every cuisine we can.
We’re people who enjoy discovering places, breweries, pubs, food and experiences — and we happen to love craft beer. Streets & Taps is where we write it down, in two voices: a married couple from Durham, travelling the way most people actually travel.
Where to eat? We Google it, compare the options and pick something we haven’t tried yet — street food one night, a proper sit-down dinner the next — always at a price that makes sense for that country.
The two voices
Who writes what
Olesia — The Streets
The everyday details people walk past without noticing
Originally from Uzbekistan, based in the UK. I’ve been a foreigner long enough to notice things locals stopped seeing years ago. I write about places the way I’d describe them to a friend — which buildings are worth stopping for, which neighbourhoods have the right energy, which detours are actually worth it.
Ian — The Taps
Reviews a beer menu like a set of engineering drawings
A Yorkshireman and an engineer. Line by line, no shortcuts. Has visited enough taprooms to have a system, and enough sense not to explain the system unprompted. Writes about beer the way beer deserves — seriously, but not solemnly.
How we rate places
Honest, experience-based and specific
No sponsored opinions
Our own visits, our own money, our own opinions. We pay for everything we write about — no paid placements, no free rounds and no arrangement with any venue. If a sponsor ever joins us for a trip or a post, we’ll tell you clearly, right at the top of it.
How Ian scores a beer
Pubs, breweries and taprooms: what they have on, what it costs, whether the beer is any good and whether the room is somewhere you’d want to spend an evening. Ian scores each one out of ten for how well the beer is kept and how good the range is — and says why. If a pint costs thirteen pounds, he’ll tell you.
Real trips, real budgets
A few days per city, a budget, weather that doesn’t cooperate — and, of course, a search for the best craft beer in town almost every day. Like everyone, we save on one thing to spend on another. As Ian puts it: “I’m a Yorkshireman — paying for yet another castle that looks like the last one, or a museum I’d only pretend to understand, is tough.”
Say hello
Tips, corrections, a pub we should try? We read everything.