Only the five-star Broadmoor hotel would base an English pub-themed bar and restaurant on an actual 19th-century English pub shipped from London, complete with gas lights, regal mahogany carvings, a tin ceiling and heady pints of Boddingtons Pub Ale.

That, along with a darn good traditional pub menu, yards of beer, servers that throw cool embroidered bee stickers at diners, and piano singalongs (whew!), makes the Golden Bee the least stuffy and most fun of The Broadmoor’s eateries.

Click here for a slideshow from the 50th anniversary celebration

In order to accurately judge this English pub, I had dinner there with an English judge.

We perused the menu of this 50-year-old pub, which includes Anglican takes on good old American bar snacks (Fried Gloucester Cheese Sticks, $7.95), truly English dishes such as a Cornish pasty – the English Hot Pocket – filled with beef, carrots, onions and potatoes ($8.95), and “English Specialties” such as a chicken pot pie ($12.50).

Sure, English cuisine doesn’t have the best reputation in the United States (“It’s not all brown; some of it is beige,” the judge said), but the Bee proves otherwise.

The slender, ale-battered fillets of Icelandic cod in the fish and chips ($13.95) didn’t get caught in the net of being too greasy, like most local fish and chips.

The delicious Steak and Mushroom Pie, braised in stout ($11.75), came crowned with a golden, flaky crust and could easily have fed two.

The seafood chowder ($5.50) arrived more New England-like – that old, thick and creamy soup loaded with potatoes. But why bring up past differences when the fish and oysters in it were so perfectly fresh-tasting and well-cooked? The same proved true of the shrimp cocktail ($12.50). The pinkie-size shrimp were pricey but proved perfectly blanched and worth the price.

The judge’s ruling: “Quite lovely.”

As we finished, the bar started to grow lively as dozens of conventioneers staying at the hotel funneled in. The piano player, in vest and sleeve garters, pounded out old tunes, and the beer-emboldened crowd started to sing along in a jolly tradition that has won this bar so many longtime local followers.

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