please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
I use to like this pub.
Sadly they have a barman in there that if he takes a dislike to you or you make a complaint about a bad pint(which is rare in there to be fair) gets you barred for being racist.Horrible little man he is.
Shame, because most of the staff are ok
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Good to have Redemption on as a permanent choice, and an offering from Dark Star on a very regular basis too.
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Wetherspoons that stretches back a fair way and is a lot bigger than it looks from the outside. Beers on were Greene King Abbot & Ruddles Best, Batemans Summer Swallow, Shepherd Neame Bishop's Finger, Redemption Hotspur & Holts Humdinger. Cider was Westons Vintage Organic. Not the best Wetherspoons I have been in, but certainly not the worst either. Handy for Turnpike Lane tube.
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Saw a bloke get bottled in here on Saturday afternoon. A massive fight followed, with full pints glasses being thrown. Still ok if you keep yourself to yourself, but I will think twice before I go back.
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I quite like it in here for a quiet pint. It can look intimidating, but inside you will find a cross section of the local area, from students and professionals to your drunk local old man. As will all spoons beer can be hit and miss, but there are usually at least 5 ales on so something will be good. You will also get change from a fiver for two beers which can't be bad.
Having said this, my last visit was spoilt slightly by a presumably BNP leaning local getting annoyed that a black and white couple were on a date.
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fourteen handpumps,several of which were on and of interesting variety,the pint of redemption brewery "hopspur"(�2.35)was seriously good,this pub is a welcome building stuck in the middle of a delightful multi cultural high street that has destroyed the area,well done spoons lets not have every part of London a halal takeaway or mosque!7/10
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Classic Wetherspoons - a big oblong pub, but with more partitions to make it feel more homely. Excellent beer range & quality
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Have been told by the manager that @Oakhamales will be featuring heavily next month, oh happy day!
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Have to agree with mendes, the Freeminer Deep Shaft was impeccable, even though it was the tail-end of the cask, and a 6.2% beer at �2.40 is amazing value.
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Acorn Challenger IPA was very good this evening, Orkney Raven was also very enjoyable.
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One guy working very hard, whilst the rest of the staff could not be bothered. Quality fine (Blindmans Siberia)
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Festival beers still on at festival prices �1.89 a pint.
Wadworth Pixley Blackberry Stout 6% a steal at that price!
Going back this evening for more.
Apparently there are about 10 casks of festival beer left ( as of yesterday evening, Friday )
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Got to agree with elsiepop. Beer has been great during the festival and the service is loads better.
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This place has come on in leaps and bounds. Five festival beers on, all in good nick, most enjoyable. Watching the Met's finest tear up and down Turnpike Lane is a nice way to spend Sunday afternoon/early evening.
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Definitely found it's feet again after a dodgy spell - temp manager maybe? - Staff try their best and always full of characters.
celt7 - 17 Sep 2010 17:16 |
I am a big fan of Wetherspoons, although they can be highly variable, ranging from very nice (for what they are) to hellholes. This fairly small (by Wetherspoons standards) pub is at the 'very nice' end of the spectrum. I have visited it twice now, and each time I have found it to be on the lively side of 'quiet' (which is perfect for me). It appears to attract good-natured but well-behaved regulars from the immediate locality (when I visited the pub for the second time, I recognized a group of men from my previous visit, who looked like they might be local shopkeepers or businessmen). On my recent visit, I found the beer selection good, opting for Banks & Taylor mild (excellent). Also worthy of mention was the very friendly service from behind the bar.
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Nice place, Staff need reminding just why they are there but that is par for the course in a Spoon pub. Beer was fine. Third or fourth time I have been here and will be coming back for more.
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Great pub. Sort of like a large village pub put in a town! Some staff a bit 'like I want to be elsewhere' but they get there in the end. A good range of beers, a fantastic range for this area, and they seem well kept. Has an outside bit so you can sit in the sun although it was a bit smoky and noisy from the traffic.
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This place seems to be on the up at the moment. Staff are trying and the choice of ales is pretty good. As someone who lives local I'm very happy with the improvement.
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I have been a defender of the Toll Gate in the past, always found it an enjoyable place to drink, well representative of the local community (including some obnoxious drunks, but also plenty of friendly locals). But definitely seems to have had a change in management in the past few months - and things have slipped dramatically. A lot of new staff who don't seem to have a clue, frustrated customers waiting for a long time, few ales on draught despite pump clips that appear otherwise ("oh, it's just gone off"), short pints, etc. A couple of times lately I've walked in, waited at the bar for a bit, then gone elsewhere to satisfy my thirst. Sad really, I hope things improve soon... at the moment I actually prefer Spouter's Corner if I'm in the mood for a local-ish Wetherspoon
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One of the more pub-like 'spoons - it even has a proper pub sign and quite a lot of seating out front. Inside, it is larger than you might expect, with an island bar and a wide range of seating (including some booths). 14 handpumps, with a pretty good selection from the real ale fesival, and the beer keenly priced at �1.85. Helpful and happy staff - rather different to the awful Spouter's Corner up the road at Wood Green.
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This is s great boozer .The choice of beers is great and the food is cheap.but there is never enough staff behind the bar which is typical of most JDW pubs.
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This once half decent, if a little rough and ready, wetherspoons is fast going to the dogs. The service has gone from for average for a wetherspoons to bloody awful. Watching the manager wandering about picking up glasses whilst one member of staff struggled with long queues was depressing. Wen he finally decided to serve he lectured me on the pronunciation of one of their new wheat beers then headed off without giving me a glass - I assume he was expecting me to drink from the bottle like it was a corona!
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I've always liked this place. However, I think the managment might have changed - the service tonight was terrible!
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This is a typical �Spoons, and I have to say not one of the best ones that I�ve been in. But, the pint of Loddon Brewery�s Razzle Dazzle was excellent. It wasn�t very busy on a Saturday afternoon with a number of free tables when I visited, nevertheless table clearing apparently didn�t seem to be a priority. This is just like many other �Spoons I�ve been in, but I was able to get a decent pint and a cheap (if not very good) baguette to eat, which is more than I can say for two of the previous pubs I had been in.
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The only thing that stops this being a great pub is the poor staff.Why are the staff at Wetherspoons so bad?
This pub has great character with a mixture of the bad and the good.I use it 2-3 times a week.
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Towards the less impressive end of the Wetherspoons range, although it is in a very down-at-heel area between Turnpike Lane tube station and Hornsey High Street. The beer range looked fairly JDW standard when I visited, and the service was indeed extremely relaxed - luckily the pub was fairly quiet so it wasn't a problem. All that said, this is probably the best pub in an area one wouldn't naturally choose to go drinking in.
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Stopped in on the way home last night. Really good pints of RCH Pitchfork and Nethergate Old Growler. Service was quick and pleasant, as ever all life was here - good mix, decent atmosphere.
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Cheap beer (less than �3 for a pint of anything), plenty of space with mixture of tables and a few couches. Slowest bar staff in the world
The only reason we visit is a drink before dinner at Penang Satay House accrosss the road.
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They have now started the beer festival, great range of beer including titanic stout and the polish plum beer but sadly a lack of staff just 2 girls who could barely speak english. Next Tuesday the mighty Camra are visiting , let us hope the bar staff can understand them .
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This place is pretty much what you�d expect from a Spoons, massive pub with cheap booze. It has more than its fair share of crazies and it�s impossible to get comfortable. A guy on the table next to me was fast asleep and snoring, but a staff member just breezed past him.
I spotted 4 real ales and there is plenty of lager. There was one member of staff on and I had to wait for the manager to appear before I was served. He was polite enough though.
There are 2 plasma screens and a designated no children area, which I thought was a good touch. There is also some seating outside, but it is next to the main road.
I don�t think I�ll be visiting here again.
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Popped in last night. Not too busy with a good range of beers. Bar staff efficient but a bit distracted. I think one of them was having a bit of a crises at the time! Sat near the front door to get a mild nicotine fix from the reasonably sized front patio. Quite a pleasant place all in all, much better than the other Wetherspoons pub up the road.
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Was in the other night tried two really good guest ales and the staff couldn't have been more efficient or freindly!
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I found this pub to be pretty average at best. It IS typical Wetherspoons despite what anyone else here says. In terms of it "not being the best pub in North London", that's a bit of an understatement. It's not the best pub in N8, it's not the best on Turnpike Lane!
Beer not very good, stick to bottled. Landlord and barstaff not overly friendly either.
Keep walking...
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Ringo_Piece - you need to get out more. The Tollgate is not the best pub in North London, but it's certainly not the worst. You get a great range of clientele in here most nights. The beer is almost always well kept and the bar staff aren't bad at all. Give it another try.
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Have to be honest - it's got better. Think smoking ban helped (controversial to say I know!). Staff much improved in past six months. Punters are the usual strange mix but its cheap and cheerful - there are far worse places.
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I must say this is about one of the only Wetherspoons left in North London I know thats still good. Has very good Staff Polite & well run. The Ales are always spot on when I go in here and Ive never had a bad Pint. I only ever go here in daytimes or early evenings on my way home but its always been OK and welcoming.
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I've always been prepared to stick up for this place, but tonight the toliets were disgusting. They need to do something about this soon!
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The last couple of times I have visited the Tollgate they seem to have solved their pump clip problem (see my complaint of 8-May). Or maybe I have just been lucky.
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This is a decent Weatherspoons, mixed crowd, mostly decent staff and a good range of beer well kept. It's not the poshest pub you'll ever find but it does wjhat it says on the tin!
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Seems like quite a decent place (perhaps in contrast to other Wetherspoons I've visited in recent memory), when we visited it was quite clean, and the drinks were in good shape.
However, it's inexcusable to leave pump clips on display when the ales are not actually available. We tried to order two of the ales on offer; the barman knew they were off, yet left the clips on display. How hard can it be to remove a clip?
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Still a better than average Spoons, but could do with a bit of a clean out.
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This pub is good. I've been there several times as I live in the area. The thing I like about it most is that it has a huge non-smoking area so I can eat my (wonderful, huge, cheap) Sunday roast without choking on someone else's bid for cancer. The staff are always exceptionally friendly and helpful - we had a couple of smokers sitting in the non smoking bit last week, using as their excuse "well we couldn't find anywhere else to sit". They were given very short shrift!
The food is always good, and arrives fast. Even the steak gets cooked the way you ask for it, hurrah!
My husband likes the beer, I like the fact that the wine is at the right temperature whatever colour it is. The deals are good too, burger and a drink �3.99, two mains for �5.49 or Sunday lunch and a pudding for �7.99.
The loo's are usually clean but there is one that has a bit of a flooding problem. Sometimes when it's busy the tables don't get cleaned as fast as they might but that's the same in any pub.
There's even a bookshelf which we happily raid when we are trying to digest another vast dinner by the fireplace.
Can't fault it. Thanks guys. I hate pubs usually becuse of the smoke, so the fact that I like coming to this one week after week is down to the great staff and well enforced non-smoking area. My husband is very grateful too!!!
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This use to be my favourite wetherspoons pub in the world.A night in here , then off to the queens for a late one and music.Was always a decent pint and atmosphere.Has gone down abit since then.Not the worst pub in the area, but certainly not the best
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Have to say this is possibly the grubbiest Wetherspoons I have ever been in. Dirty glasses, manky toilets, staff not fussed at all - but then looking at the state of most of the customers I understand their apathy. Stay home with something from the local off licence.
celt7 - 29 Oct 2006 20:15 |
Pretty much the boggiest of bog standard Wetherspoon's you'll ever see.
Usual cheap prices, variety of beers, indifferent service et al. Slightly tattier environmant than some and a more varied mix of people distinguish it from any dozen other such pubs.
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It is a nice big wetherspoon's pub. The usual.
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For a wetherspoons it's not too bad. They have speciality beers on most of the time, a good selection of real ales (including some class cornish ones) and the bar staff are very efficient. You can more often that not find a spot away from the usual crowd that gathers at any pub that has cheap drinks and enjoy the rest of your time there.
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There are far worse pubs than this in the JD Wetherspoon chain. The thing to do here is to go right to the back, past all the usual JDW lowlife who congregate at the front: do this and you'll find the place is actually fairly quiet and, for a JDW, clean.
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I went to Hornsey last week intending to do a bit of a crawl and check out a group of pubs in the area. I ended up enjoying the Tollgate enough that I took up residence there for several rounds and most of the evening. A friendly atmosphere, a nice list of guest ales (even if half of them were the same Fuller's line that can be found a every second pub in the city) at a really good price, and a knowledgeable barman eager to talk about the different beers on offer. Overall, a place I wish were nearer by...
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Once again a typical Wetherspoon's but this one does have plenty going for it. Namely a monthly beer festival (this October it is Red Squirrel) that is both good and cheap. Other than that, exactly what you would expect.
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Had my bag stolen in here on Thursday 28th April. According to the police, it's notorious for it! Happens all the time apparently! They could have put some notices up warning customers about this - the Wetherspoon's at the top of Wood Green has exactly the same problems. All the pubs in Wood Green have gone down the pan in the last 5 years. I'll have to move I think......
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Interesting conversations with real characters, and a lovely front garden.
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Fairly typical Wetherspoon's pub - takes ages to get served, food takes ages to arrive and isn't always properly cooked. I returned a beanburger that had been deep fried from frozen and was still cool in the middle - "they" weren't happy - ha!
Clientele - mostly broken down alcoholics who will always get served first as they SHOUT their orders at the barstaff - never mind the fact that you've just stood there for 10 minutes wondering if you're invisible....
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