Plough, Westcliff on Seaback to pub details please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
The best thing about the Plough is its customers - oldish geezers to a man - at least we know where they drink and can thus avoid them - I don't want to be rude but they are not my sort of people. On the few occasions when the weather or proximity to the crush bar at the Palace next door has forced us in, there was no cask beer at all and my friend was presented with a warm white wine from a fridge which was not switched on. The carpets...don't ask. The 'live' music at the weekends consists of more 'geezers' shouting into the mike with variable musicality. Sometimes it's Karaoke night, sometimes it's a big old boy with backing tracks. Either way, you drink up quickly (or leave it) hoping the noise will stop. It doesn't.
To be fair, I might be describing your kind of boozer. Horses for courses eh?
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We visited this pub on a Saturday night when they had a singer called East Beach Dave singing, we saw the small poster in the window and gave it a go. He was bloody marvelous, didn't put a note wrong, he sang every type of music you can name and it was all good. People were boogieing all over the place. The pub is open till 2am but the singer finishes around mid night. The beer aint bad, prices aint bad either, the staff are friendly and service is good. Its a big old boozer that wont be featured in house and home for its decor, where it needs a bit of a party atmosphere to get it rocking which happened when we visited, all types of people, all nice and mellow, young and old, boys and girls, enjoying the entertainment and the booze, well worth seeing this guy again. We had a great night.
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Good grief this place is awful. I used to come here with the Mrs about 10 years ago and it was a bit dated then but they had a reasonable range of drinks and that "steak on a skillet n' chips for 2 quid" kept us interested. Used to be one section as the "saloon bar" (full of old scummers and wasters) and the slightly nicer "wine bar" bit in a different section.
Now however they've knocked it all through and err..it's now completely full of scummers and wasters!
You can always tell when a pub's died, cos it has that sickly detergent small that stcks in your throat. The Kronenbourg was stale and they had "run out" of diet coke (Pepsi). I don't think I've EVER been to a pub where they run out of diet cola? Surely Pepsi would be furious about that? Unless of course they owed Pepsi money.
Part of the problem with this place lies with the size. It's HUGE, like an aircraft hangar! Knocking two large spaces into one vast space has doen it no favours at all. Utterly characterless and only a dozen punters (all blokes, all dodgy looking) staring at Sky Sports on the pull down screen (all the blinds at the front were closed to accomodate viewing this screen, so not even a whiff of natural daylight to make things marginally better).
Yuk. Horrible place, horrible people. Somebody buy this place and/or just put it out of its misery....
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You get a reasonable selection of beer here at an average price. The Directors was good.The trouble here was that even though it was quite quiet for a Friday the service was very slow (took the order quickly then disappeared for ages before getting the pint, this happened twice so not changing barrel).
The interior is dated and they had karoke on, which is never a good sign for me, and not a great atmosphere, but have been in here recently on a Saturday lunch time and found it okay.
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Not bad at all
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A good, down-to-earth, reliable boozer.
No fancy decor, no gimmicks, just a warm comfy pub livened up by the mix of sociable of Irish and Afro-Carribeans as well as the locals.
It's also in a good area for dinner, being opposite 2 good Indian restarants, a spanking new Chinese place and a classy-looking Portuguese bistro which I haven't tried yet....
A good night out if you don't like Southend High Street!
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