please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
Pub is now closed
|
Well - I was most shocked to see the reviews after I'd been there. Obviously it has been taken over rather recently! I'd just got back from LA and we were on our way back fto Hampstead and I saw a rather nice gastro-pub in a rather un-promising location. Imagine my suprise to see (I think) Courtney Pine in the corner. The food was OUTSTANDING..even though it is fusion. V resonablre price too, �15.00 for the Anadolu berek with aubergine - Di-vine. Ask for Julian BY NAME for the wine list. They only serve Georgian and English wine - bizarre I know but the quality was terrif. These guys REALLY KNOW what they're doing. V V shocked to see this place in Highgate borders rather than HG itself..still. A find. Will it last though??? The big Q.....
|
LOL @ archwayboy
|
Go to the Red Cap: 5 mins down the road & also lovely Irish.
They won't kill you there.
|
This pub is special, even given the competition in Archway.
My last evening at this pub (and it will be my last) involved stumbling across an older gentleman in the toilet stark naked except for a mop having messed himself and attempting to clean it up. Later he wandered through the bar, minus shoes, but complete with soiled trousers and pungent aroma to finish his pint before being chased from the pub by an aerosol weilding landlord. Whilst finishing my pint to exit the madhouse another genleman fell backwards off his bar stool to be rescused by other less than steady friends.
As i said, this pub is special and an Archway institution for hardy locals.
|
Sadly I agree with the comment below.
A blemish on pubs.
anonymous - 17 Jun 2010 14:34 |
Awful pub. Toilets are probably the cleanest part of it. Would have closed years ago if it wasn't for its fortuitous location across from the tube station. Avoid at all costs, unless you're a 50+ year old unemployed Irishman stinking of piss in which case you'll feel right at home.
|
Very lively at ten o'clock on Saturday night.
An old fashoned North London Irish pub that looks like all it's old screens and mirrors would scrub up nicely but just keeping the place open seems enough for the management.
Beers are the usual range of keg rubbish.
|
Nikita you will be missed in the lion. Come back! (P)
|
Tubeboy has it spot on. The stench of stale piss is awful the service is dreadful and the beer disgusting. Such a shame to see a grand old building being so misused.
|
Average pub, but badly let down by the stench of piss that hits you like a tsunami when you walk through the door. Never again will I go there until the place has had a wipe with a rag and some Jeyes fluid.
|
This is exactly the sort of pub I would expect to find opposite Archway tube station with its �diverse crowd�, Guinness a plenty and grubby interior. The bar was lined with locals sitting on bar stools that wouldn�t have moved if I had set them on fire and the barmaid didn�t seem to want to serve anyone that wasn�t standing directly at the bar � Hopefully you can see the problem that I was confronted with.
After a fun game of sardines I managed to part with 3 quid for a pint of lager that was quickly knocked back as on my way out I still had to fight my way past the pisshead that was blocking the door when I entered.
The only plus that I could find was that the pub has 2 plasma screens, but that hardly makes up for the pub�s other failings.
Bag o� Shyte!
|
This pub has everything you need, if by 'everything' you mean 'nothing' and by 'you need' you mean 'including walls'.
It is a tatty bench by the side of the road with a snaggle-toothed dimwit offering swigs of God-alone-knows from a bucket he found at a rat convention.
Although they do a lovely ploughmans.
|
The Lion is a local source of ridicule for being trapped in the past. Like drinking in an old man's living room.
Terrible service, I was largely ignored for not having been drinking there for the last 50 odd years.
I saw three young women walking out of there one night, I had to do a double-take.
I think they were just in to use the toilets, right enough.
|
Great pub for a real Irish night - this is what you might expect from Holloway/Archway and the feeling of a community survives here.
Come here to join the singing on Sunday night.
anonymous - 24 Mar 2007 17:44 |
Enjoyed it in here-was a bit of a throwback to the 80's when I used to drink round here...The St Johns gone gastro & the Archways gone euro-but the Lion roars on!..Good atmosphere on sunday night,with the 1 man band mixing it up with the usual Irish tunes & some rebel songs(?).....Good boozy, mixed age atmosphere-the kind of Irish pub you're looking for on a very damp night!.
|
Agree about the old archway crowd drinking in there. Nicely decorated pub, however the manageress likes to serve her regulars first and leave strangers waiting ages for a drink!!! Not a good way to run a pub
anonymous - 22 Sep 2005 16:46 |
Was in here on a Sunday night - it's a decent pub for a drink and a bit of craic with Irish friends. Plenty of sound people about, always good fun to laugh at the Irish country music, reasonably priced drink, oh and the Archway crowd of the 1990's seem to have upped sticks and moved in here. Good service as well.
|
it used to be alright til they refurbished it now it looks like the palmerston posh.
|
