BITE user comments - ClareBaldingsChin
Comments by ClareBaldingsChin
The Monkhams Inn, Buckhurst Hill
Regular book club meetings in here, alternating with MENSA symposiums every second week. Bags to do whilst your man waits for you in your carriage, check out the replica wall (brick for brick!) in the extensive gardens where they play the Eton wall game or peruse the Magna Carta on display in the Orangery.
What? They’ve dismantled the wall, wiped their arses on the Carta and thrown the toffs on the pyre along with the books? Gah! I knew it wouldn’t last!
Still a chav palace, unfortunately; avoid.
3 Feb 2016 15:37
Has to be the best Spoon in the UK. Cavernous inside with 2 bars, decent selection of beers and decent (cheap) food.
Lots of famous 'Georges' on the wall (Orwell, Best, etc) but no picture of Peppa Pig's younger brother who shares the same name. Yet.
Look busy, here comes the Crow!
21 Jan 2016 15:18
Hey, what happened to the floor? Has it been taken out? It was there when I last visited.
Wait 'til Paul37 finds out.
20 Jan 2016 17:16
The Railway Bell, South Woodford
Well, they finally got round to gentrifying the Railway and first impressions are good. And then you go inside.
What used to be a rather charming, down-at-heel sort of place has now been polished and scrubbed within and inch of its life and the old clientele supplanted with the twits that used to frequent Jets next door. A victory for the brewery, a Pyrrhic victory for the regulars.
Deafening TVs and terrible acoustics (due to large parts of the bar being tiled), means it's ear-bleedingly loud. And that's annoying cos I've got loads to say.
6/10
20 Jan 2016 15:12
The Duke of Edinburgh, Wanstead
Another pub that's gone through the gentrification process, resulting in more expensive drinks and food presented on driftwood. When I was there they had a terrible 'jazz' band playing gash music for a room full of rah-rah toffs. Shut up.
I'm aware that the the pub's former incarnation was a dump, but this refit attracts yummy mummies and their boring city worker husbands. Increasingly, there's no place for well-read, articulate (and modest) members of the working class to drink.
Why modernise a pub like this? Keep all the idiots contained in their own pub where they can only offend each other. The chavs that used to frequent such places now have nowhere to go so look elsewhere, meaning that the next (nearest) 'proper' pub becomes their new local meaning the existing regulars at that pub are forced, in turn, to find somewhere else. And so it goes on. The yuppies and the chavs have somewhere to drink at the cost of your average boozer. Bah.
They shoot horses, don't they?
20 Jan 2016 14:45
Decent pub and not too many bearded trendies. Must be the only pub in London with an upstairs area dedicated to darts – 6 (count 'em) boards for the budding Jocky Wilsons out there. I chucked a 9 dart 501 when I was last in, ask the landlady if you don't believe me.
Does it have a Greek music night, I hear you ask?
Yes, on a Monday!
20 Jan 2016 12:24
Something of a dichotomy this pub, you either love it or hate it (it would appear). Some unfair reviews here, I guess it is a locals' pub but let's face it, there's precious little to challenge it in Leytonstone; if you can find a good pub, stick to it.
I like it, good selection of beers, good jukebox, decent (wood oven) baked pizzas out the back and occasional dj/live act/charity evening (vinyl night, £1 a song with proceeds going to MacMillan) makes for a more varied evening.
If you don't know the area, it's unlikely you'll find the pub which explains why it's a good pub and not full of typical Hellstone idiots.
8/10
18 Jan 2016 18:08
The Three Colts, Buckhurst Hill
Not a terrible pub, but not great. Full of TOWIE girls and identikit Essex blokes, perma-tanned and 'sleeve' tattooed whose frequent visits to the toilets would raise an eyebrow on even the most Botoxed of brows. Annoyingly narrow in places means that getting to the bar is a chore, they do, however, have plenty of staff when it's busy.
That said, if you can escape the throng, there's a decent beer garden and a couple of pockets where it's possible to have a breather away from the Essex Illuminati. Oh, and it's a Tottenham pub, so take a point off for that.
6/10
18 Jan 2016 17:12
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The Good Mixer, Camden
Had the good fortune of singing with Amy Winehouse in here a little while back: I was in the bar, she was on the radio.
I thank-you.
17 Feb 2016 13:59