BITE user comments - colonelflay
Comments by colonelflay
Sad to say it's gone right downhill. There was a time when you it was a REAL Soho pub full of the usual Soho flotsam. I went there a while ago on a saturday lunchtime and it was a morgue. No carpet and a hole in the floor that gave a view of the cellar. It needs to be run by people who understand pubs, but no-one in breweries do anymore. Drink was average. The fixtures and fittings are still great: but it needs saving. It is a ghost ship at present.
2 Jun 2012 23:08
It was all ripped out and mucked about with about ten years ago and never recovered as far as I am concerned. It is now expensive and has an abandoned out-of-hours-music-venue feel. It could be a gem but will need work.
27 May 2012 21:53
Best pub in Purley by a long way. Notwithstanding bar uniforms and promo material, it is the only one that resembles how pubs were until a few years ago. Range of spirits and beer is very good and prices thrash any nearby licensed premises.
27 May 2012 21:49
Superb specimen of London pub design: with three separate bars as used to be the norm. A midwinter evening in the front bar can be cosier than your front room at home. Friday nights is too packed. Saturday teatime great. Downside: sluggish and indifferent bar service.
27 May 2012 21:33
It is one of the best pubs in Brighton. A lot of pubs have been 'modernised', 'hippyfied' or otherwise changed, but not the Queensbury. If you find that Brighton is gradually being wrecked by stag and hen madness then you will enjoy this pub. It is like a theatre bar. You feel welcomed and the house doubles are good value. If you like showbiz of the past you will enjoy the posters. I make a lot of visits to Brighton and during the winter it is the perfect stop, tucked away just behind the front.
27 May 2012 21:28
Splendid pub. They get a lot of the important things right here. Visit often.
13 Jun 2010 18:47
Horrendously noisy. like a lot of modern 'innovative' pubs some really good ideas but the bar is too low, and when busy the wait for service becomes insulting.
13 Jun 2010 18:44
A pub I've used on and off for 20 years whenever I've been in the area (i come on business from Leeds. Contrary to the glowing reviews on here I find the pub has deteriorated in some important ways. The brewery, like all breweries in the south of England, has decided to push bar prices into the realms of racketeering. The beer is shockingly espensive and the service slow.
The price structure has alienated virtually all the market traders, who now drink at the Goose pub up the street. This has damaged the atmosphere of the place: it lacks the bustle and bonhomie of former years. The bar staff are on the slow side. This is not generally noticeble because the price structure has reduced custom, but when the hot weather arrives and the excellent beer garden fills up the bar becomes choked with empties and service ludicrously slow with staff seeminly unable to handle multiple orders as used to be industry standard for barmen.
One staff member was obtuse to the point of rudeness. My instinct tells me that Youngs have tried to make the whole place over as corporate proposition, relying on expense account trade. This will diminish in the coming fiscal turbulence. It is horrendously expensive.
13 Jun 2010 18:40
To Slerpy: I rarely drink real ale so that is not a priority when assessing a pub. I've been using the George on and off since it opened and I can assure you this pub has just kept going downhill. The fact it is dirt cheap is the only reason for its survival.
You make a sarcastic comment: That I should look for a utopian pub, as if I am judging the George on impossibly high standards. This is nonsense. I judge a pub on three things: 1) the quality of drink kept 2)Bar service (this includes attention to detail and manners 3) ambience.
The George scores well on 1) but loses everything on 2). I don't mind the ambience. But 2) sinks this pub every time. It is so badly managed, with so many basic public house rules broken, the staff are so rude and so incompetent that it is truly hard to believe you are in an English pub.
12 Nov 2009 02:58
A pub that has gone downhill badly. The staff work hard and some are friendly but overall the attitude is officious and about as far from proper public house behaviour as you can get. The greatest crime of the modern pub is bar staff being ignorant of the golden rule of knowing who is next to be served. This ignorance is demonstrated with a vengeance at The George. Many people waiting, the bar staff for the most part working at a snail's pace and then turning round and asking 'who's next?' Some unscrupulous person always puts himself forward and the atmosphere darkens even more. JD Wetherspoons MUST address this soon.
It is ironic that Wetherspoon pubs were initially designed to be traditional, because poor standards and non-traditional working practices are more common in them than anywhere else. They no longer ring the last bells at The George (so as to avoid the work the bells would attract to the bar). The staff grow ever more truculent. A man standing next to me at the bar was given a vodka and coke instead of the rum and coke he asked for. Amazingly the barmaid immediately got into a pedantic argument with him, trying to prove he'd asked for vodka and coke. The barmaid's stupidity and arrogance was at first astonishing and then became embarrassing. Once again, this demonstrates the precipitous decline of standards at JD Wetherspoons.
The food is now far more variable than it was at one time. Stone-cold or burnt offerings are quite a possibility. Again, truculence is often the first response from the staff. Staff routinely smash bottles into the steel bins by either bar. These should not be in the bar and the staff should not be allowed to throw bottles in them. At closing time the atmosphere among the drinkers is usually jolly and well-behaved. The staff on the other hand storm around bullying people into finishing their drinks and looking for the tiniest excuse to bar people. I don't blame them for being hacked off with the job, but unfortunately it is not the drinkers' fault they are working in such a tedious job. The real fault, of course, doesn't lie with the staff but with JDW's senior management. My guess is that it is the old story of 'profits up, standards slipping.'
One cannot fault the range of liquor and beer and the prices, and this is how such a poorly run pub survives. If a pub of similar prices and dimensions opened nearby with a more pleasant atmosphere, The George would be closing down soon afterwards.
9 Oct 2009 08:51
The Toucan, Soho
The Guinness is good but it's all a bit smug for what it is.
2 Jun 2012 23:12