BITE user comments - pauldanon
Comments by pauldanon
Been through a few traumatic changes of management (and maybe ownership) in recent months but hopefully now stabilised under mein host Tony's affable stewardship. Bitter was sporadic for a while, but supply now seems more reliable. Great folks in here (many of them from central casting). If you unsuspectingly take an overdue Lambeth-library book in with you, they think you're being anti-social and insist you join them for a good old Daily Mail-inspired rant. Studded green-leather benches make you feel like an MP fiddling his expenses with his mistress (only without the mistress and the expenses). Bring back the greyhound-burgers, rubber lettuce and bakelite chips of yesteryear, I say.
3 Jun 2011 01:19
The Binley Park Inn, Covent Garden
Is this really in Covent Garden or is it in Coventry?
20 Dec 2009 15:01
Great place. My sitting-room in fact. Psst. I think they have a real phone number that I found on the web, to whit: 020 7735 2594.
26 May 2009 23:15
Emphatically not closed, this place is my new local, but don't let that put you off. This has real ale, charming folks running it, affable clientele and good pub-food - nothing poncey or gastro. A Lambeth councillor was gracious enough to hold an informal surgery there for me. It's pleasantly lived-in and fun to visit. Sarf Lahndan at her best. Stupendously handy for Oval tube, multiple bus-routes, Kennington park and not too far from Vauxhall mainline station. Visit this place but don't tell anyone else about it.
18 Apr 2009 18:39
The chef went away, then she came back, but she's now gone away again, apparently for good. This is grave. The food was one of the good features of the place and, IMHO, it drew people there. It can be very empty so I fear for its commercial viability, especially if the kitchen stays closed. It needn't be Mauritian cuisine; I imagine they could get someone in to do Chinese. Petition 10 Downing Street on this now.
28 May 2008 11:25
Maybe the management would be so kind as to change the name on here. See my previous post. A useful entry on pages such as these would be opening-times. They tell me that this place is open every day from 15:00 to 23:00.
21 Mar 2008 12:36
The upstairs bar is less crowded though it may deliver fewer beers than downstairs. The staff up there are nice once you attract their attention, though this can take time since they like to interact with each other to the exclusion of noticing you. This is a place with all the curtain-up, light-the-lights theatrical buzz but mercifully without the subsequent torture of having to sit with a bursting bladder all the way through hours of watching a bunch of self-regarding actaws strutting up and down in wigs. It consequently goes nice and quiet around 19:29. When they all roll pretentiously back in at a quarter past 10, make sure you've previously ordered yourself a sustaining tray of three or four self-lobotomising Sam Smith's Hefe Weisses and try not to look too smug.
25 Aug 2007 21:38
Mintyboom mightn't be unduly worried, but when's the blessed thing going to open again? Cirrhosis could strike at any moment.
25 Aug 2007 21:26
Not a pub, but you can just come here and drink. It's actually a Mauritian winebar with super Indian-ocean food prepared amidst flames and sparks flying upwards in the highly-visible kitchen. Chairs a bit too lumpy and outdoors, but it's a friendly place taking payment-cards. Very close to Acton Town tube; look out for the dodo, symbol of Mauritius.
26 Jan 2007 19:16
The Strutton Arms, Westminster
Goons photos now removed. This is like Henry VIII's reformation. Can hardly stand to visit now. Old Spike must be spinning in his Sussex grave.
9 Dec 2006 21:04
This cake-icing-architraved building (pic to follow) used to be the White Lion, a pubbers' pub where you could spit on your hands and challenge the whole house to a game of pool and be quids-in for the evening (always assuming you won). Otherwise, Acton nick was handy.
The new incarnation is an internal testament to the wonders of masked rotary sanding, rococo-Baroque corner-mouldings and Bauhaus stainless steel kitchenarama. You'd like a pint of bitter here? Certainly, sir; one John Smith's Extra Cold* coming right up.
This place may not win a Casque Marque for its olde-style, hand-tapped, bladder-wrenching Suffolk ales, but W3's first Michelin star could soon be on its way here. We all loved the risotto, linguine and organically home-slaughtered burger.
Ealing borough councillors hoping to have our beloved Acton awarded third world status for overseas aid purposes may need to hide this place from the World Bank/IMF inspectors when they come around, though they can certainly take them there for lunch after they've signed the cheque.
* I kid you not; it exists!
24 Jun 2006 20:38
The two guys playing (forgive the highly technical musicological terms, Goldsmiths students, please) were great, though I think that what they were doing is politely called "tribute". As m'learned friends on this page testify, this place swings bigtime late into the night. The lighting could be dimmer but maybe the 100w bulbs help keep the best of SE14 order gentlemen please. Not, I suspect, a beer-connoisseur's pub, but certainly a cheery place to enjoy one of the few fruits of Blairism: late opening. Just be sure you visit before a day off work or book a duvet-day.
6 Jun 2006 22:19
Traffic thunders by here on what must be one of the country's busiest roads. It's a Fuller's place but not very pubby. This was a quiet weekday-evening, though I imagine this place is planned for industrial-scale customer-handling, with a double-sided bar and pleasantly bustling staff. The menu is medium-cuisine and, sadly, the veggie-ravioli (more like pierogi) arrived tepid on an unheated plate. The �11.25 bottle of house-red is harsh but then that's its job; to get you to order something decent next time. If such time there be.
6 Jun 2006 22:08
For all its good looks and well-kept ale, the staff are a little sniffy, as my fellow-reviewers remark below. I can understand that, for them, it's just another shift, a source of income and/or part of a career in barmaiding which may extend over many years and places. However, hospitality isn't just about delivering solid and liquid consumables across a counter and giving the correct change. It's about making people feel welcome, if not actually at home. Particularly off-putting if, as you walk towards the bar, the otherwise unoccupied person turns away and pretends to inspect a row of bottles for invisible woodlice. This was one of those places where I found myself trying to get the bartenders to act more cheerfully by being artificially upbeat myself. A pub is more than another chainstore, public library or gym-reception where you hand back your dirty towels. Customer-facing staff who won't engage with the public might be better off in backroom jobs.
28 Feb 2006 17:27
Industrial-scale pubbing, this, but W'spoon's are there for that. Two pints and lunch for two, and you get change out of a tenner. Nice and warm on a bitterly cold day. Why, one wonders, does one consume cold drinks in such weather? There must be something about them other than their temperature. Pub dead handy for Cutty Sark DLR station. With Lent on the horizon, a nice place to take leave of one of life's pleasures.
28 Feb 2006 17:16
Another meal which we all enjoyed. The stuffed peppers and risotto is a modestly-sized dish but quite delicious. Manager/landlord and his South African assistant most cordial and welcoming. The place seems generally to be liked because one sees families with babies, plus elderly and disabled, as well as partying-types and older hangers-on like me. The Chiswick went off for a while but there was Pride and ESB to fill in. Rugby on the screens but the volume wasn't excessive so non-sports-fans like me could still talk and listen. The impression is of cleanliness and efficiency. My companions could smoke (though not at table), but I guess policy on that may soon be decided by higher authorities than landlord/managers. Garden looks nice but you wouldn't have caught me out there in this weather.
13 Feb 2006 15:40
No real ale visible on the pumps here but then this place doesn't present itself as an old-style boozer. I guess �32 was a fair bit to pay for bruschetta (effectively fancy cheese on special toast from whose base one had to peel a paper-napkin), 75cl of red wine, and coffee for two, but I suppose we weren't just eating and drinking, but also renting a table with an interesting view of Brighton townscape on a street which is too narrow for the (at least) three bus-routes which use it. The 10% service-charge seems mandatory, though it probably only rated five or six.
13 Feb 2006 15:34
Its redbrick exterior gives the impression of middle-agedness, but inside it's a student-bar. The drinks are, well, drinks. (I imagine that, in the age before pubs were turned from family-businesses into managed establishments, a website like this would have been able to go into detail about how the pub-brewed beers were served but, of course, there was no web then and, anyway, this is now.) Undergraduates like the Sunday-roasts. The furnishing-theme is marshmallow.
14 Dec 2005 13:21
Worried to read jess9's comment. On a flying visit, we found it comfortable and a good mixture of old and new. Although the interior is modern, it's not been so de-pubbed as to be inhospitable. The hillside townscape is pleasing and the advertised 3pm closure was conveniently forgotten. BTW, some pubs on this hill are opting for opening after lunchtime.
14 Dec 2005 13:06
The Red Lion and Pineapple, Acton
Thus near-24-hour drinking comes to sleepy (and now predominantly hung-over) Acton. The question arises of whether, if one availed onself of the full extent of opening time (in this case from nine a.m. daily including Sundays, and sometimes way beyond 11 at night), one might be charged council-tax here rather than at one's home. This assuming that, having availed oneself etc. etc., one could remember where one's home was.
4 Dec 2005 17:27
We ordered drinks and food over the bar; no problem with waiters and bills. Delicious tagliatelle (pronounced with a deliberate and perceptible "g" in the Ealing argot) with vegetarian sauce, and sausage and mash, both apparently prepared fresh by a white-hatted hirsute chef who regards customers with unintentional surliness though a serving-hatch that could be taken for a stainless steel widescreen TV. The pedestrian Pride, though drinkable, made one yearn for the low-cost cornucopia of pornographically-named guest-beers at Wetherspoon's who, it appears, now never close.
4 Dec 2005 17:20
The Kings Arms Bar and Hotel, Brentford
Geoff Hamer writes "there's no excuse for going in this pub" and I can quite see why. I was only there because I was waiting for someone to get off a train. Shame really because it's not badly placed and the beer was OK. Bright lights and deadpan, if not actually rude, service. Noisy customers, probably from the offices nearby. After one, we adjourned sharpish to Di's Lord Nelson up the road.
25 Nov 2005 14:09
Cosy it ain't. A big, old-style city pub. OK for one around the corner from the country's busiest railway-station. Passing road traffic much in evidence. Sport on screens dominates; fine if you like that. Narrow range of crisp-flavours.
9 Nov 2005 14:16
We were bounced out of our table by the dominos-players. Most of them are all right but one of them likes to bang down his pieces as he plays. Maybe he thinks it adds drama, forcefulness and pizzazz to his game. What it actually does is add irritation to people nearby. A ban might be in order. The usual good-quality bitters at low prices for which we love W'spoons. Right on top of the Victoria to Brighton railway and under an office-block. Handy for station, buses and 24-hour Tesco's opposite. Cheery staff.
9 Nov 2005 13:55
The Red Lion and Pineapple, Acton
The Wetherspoon's formula works here too. You know what you're getting and it's pretty good. Nice to get change out of a note when you buy drinks for three people. Staff are sometimes scarce and there are anguished looks on patrons' faces as they try to get served. Try taking a pretty daughter or handsome son to attract their attention. The under-age-admissions policy is a bit draconian. A 17-year-old would have to leave in the early evening. Pity since there's a nice, smokeless area which is ideal for eating.
9 Nov 2005 13:48
The Strutton Arms, Westminster
Renamed the Strutton Arms, after the market-street at whose north end it stands.
9 Nov 2005 13:36
We've had two momentous birthday celebrations there in the past year or so and it's been fun. The first, however, was marred by the theft of a handbag, so watch your luggage folks. The food is veggie haute cuisine without being nouvelle in the size of the portions. With big orders like our birthday-ones, some dishes arrive at the table cool. They're not so PC as to disallow smoking and, when it was my birthday, the champagne was lovely. I like how baby-friendly they are, with high-chairs everywhere and the odd chip on the floor - somewhere to bring the grandchildren if they get food-faddy. The loos (at least the gents') are fine, with soap and stuff, though they're a bit cramped. Larger gentlemen beware. The music can be carnivorous; the real ales sporadic but well-tended; coffee potable; ketchup unexpectedly Heinz; ethos Brightonly hip -- and yet they serve old gits like me. Run a tab on a numbered wooden spoon and you're everyone's friend. Turn 50 there and you'll get sweet smiles from behind the bar, where they held your reservation for 30 minutes and put up with raucous laughter and multiple mobile phone movies. This is dietary hip which, thanks to the conventional supply of drink, also broadens the hips. Middle-aged spread? Well at least it's made from goat's cheese rather than bits of the goat itself.
26 Aug 2005 19:32
May I just point out that the reason for my rant below was that the pub's name had been spelled "Bottle"?
20 Aug 2005 21:08
Based on extensive research involving looking out of the window of the number 10 bus on its circuitous journeys between Milton Keynes and Leighton Buzzard, I do assert that the second word of the pub's name is actually "Bottel". I note that there's a similarly-named (and just as quaintly-spelled) establishment in Wokingham, Berkshire. Now, this, of course, changes everything. Don't you find that, even without visiting the place, the ale seems somehow hoppier and the sausages have that bit more of a bang to them? BTW, one assumes that "bottel" is an archaic spelling and not a typographical error at the brewery's inn-sign studio.
Spellings like these, whether intentional or accidental, help make pub-life somehow more interesting and authentic. On this very page we have the "Cask Marque" -- not "Mark", mind you. It'd be even more daring and exotic if it were "Casque Marque".
The proposed licensed victuallers' regulator, OfPub, may well institute a committee to supervise the controlled and plausible implementation of quaint spellings. The relevant White Paper mentions how pubs employing antique nomenclature might need to have been in existence for at least 18 months. It would not be acceptable, for example, to erect a nautically-themed vodka- and sushi-bar made out of reinforced concrete and plate-glass underneath Heron Quays Docklands Light Railway station and then, from the first day of trading, start calling it "Ye Olde Jolly Jack Tar's Merrye Seafarynge Tavern", even if all the staff were required to wear stripy jumpers, peg-legs and eyepatches.
18 Aug 2005 10:26
I reckon posh golfers and tourists must stay here, but I can't afford even to ask about the room-rates. The bar, though definitely hotel-style, lets you in without a tie and the drinks are at pub-prices. There are so-called snacks, some of which would feed a family of three for the best part of a day. The steak-baguettes rock. Sometimes the extractor-fan on the north side makes a racket, and the recorded pop music can be surprisingly un-hotelesque. However, there are deep chairs to sink into and framed cartoons about nearby Woburn Abbey on one wall. Good views of the village's tortuous (for traffic) crossroads, and sometimes of ersatz rustic Countrie Fayres and Olde Tyme Farmyard Markets on the paved and grassed areas nearby. The staff aren't your old-style craggy pub types but, rather, uniformed tourism-industry careerists, some of whom are not native English speakers. Omit the wisecracks and rhyming-slang when ordering. Coffee-machine makes enough noise to herald the apocalypse.
10 Aug 2005 17:07
Hotel with pub downstairs that feels like a pub, not an hotel-bar. Once spotted BBC weatherman Rob McElwee checking in and hiring a car (though not a convertible). Gorgeous gastro food in a dining-room that's sometimes sparsely populated. Abbot on draft and, of course, a glass of dry white wine for the ladies.
10 Aug 2005 16:56
1 October 1973 was a chilly day and an even colder night, but the Brickies radiated warmth as we student freshmen picked our way towards it through a field of halfbricks from recently-demolished (and probably quite serviceable) terraced housing. The nice thing was that this was a local for locals (or at least for people who had been local until the bulldozers came and they had to move to high-rises in the suburbs). We students were a minority and would never have committed the faux pas of asking for a lager. In them days it were John Smith's mild at 17p and Magnet bitter at 19p, followed later by wrapped-up chop-suey roll and chips (23p) from the K W Kong takeaway on Woodsley Road.
After some months' faithful attendance at the Brickies (with its rustic, outdoor, almost roofless gents and crackly 12" records on the gramophone), I went, out of curiosity, to seek out the saloon-bar. Instead I found a room of even greater austerity than the one I had been used to. We had been in the saloon all along.
The dour Mr Jim and (only slightly less dour) Mrs Mabel Bingham were our hosts in those days, with big, cardigan-ed Len and the vivacious Vera also behind the bar. Ask Jim how he was and he would reply, straight-faced and unsmiling: "champion" and not a word more.
The big treat was on Saturday-nights when a senior gentleman in mittens came to play the rather out-of-tune upright piano. Not only did the patrons enjoy his renditions from the old English singalong repertoire, but so did the fish on top of the piano, who whizzed excitedly around their tank as you or I might do if someone exploded a nuclear warhead under our sitting-room.
10 Aug 2005 16:39
The Strutton Arms, Westminster
Tragic that Jimmy Grafton's smoky old theatrical boozer, haunt of the Goons in their heyday, has been unconvincingly Irish-themed. Nothing against Irish theming, mind, but it's like turning Westminster Abbey into a Subway. The spirit of Major Bloodnok, Henry Crun and Jim Spriggs lingers feintly on in one or two framed pictures (Princess Margaret and Tony Snowdon smiling along with Spike and colleagues) in the alcoves, but the spell has been broken. You could visit for lunch and not even realise you were on consecrated ground.
With its central location it's handy for more or less everything urban, including St James's Park tube. Be very careful, mind, if making your way there during the present twitchy times in London. Scotland Yard lies between you and the station and those machine-guns the rozzers outside are holding look real.
By the way, I here once encountered the Speediest Barman in the World, who had everything poured out and your change ready before you'd even finished saying "and one for yourself while you're about it my good man". Where is he now? Possibly themed out of existence. Or shot on suspicion.
10 Aug 2005 15:49
Who here would dare to call this a mere pub? This isn't a pub, mate. It's a whole village in microcosm. The place is heaving with parish councillors, amdram fanatics in costume (or are they?), lollipop ladies, jam-making matrons, local newsletter-editors, school governors, other assorted busybodies and, chance as not, half the Church of England's hierarchy in unconvincing mufti. Some devoted regulars might even have their post delivered here, and the milkman always knows where to find late payers. York's whacky, idiosyncratic bus services orbit this pub in a kind of timetabled Brownian motion, and so do the customers at closing time (if such time there be).
10 Aug 2005 15:27
This be border country, here. Down in the suburban no-man's land between Ealing and Brentford, recoiling slightly from the booming elevated M4, within sight of the Heathrow flight-path, and becoming cheery mayhem when the Bees are at home, this place has character and homeliness. Diminutive but self-confident landlady Di gave it a makeover a few years ago, so that at least some of the patterned carpet, brown varnish and nicotine was scraped away, surprisingly to reveal turquoise dado rail and stripped pine floor. The western extension is Chiswick gastro, the southern sofa-area Ealing frontroom, while the east wing retains much of its Ozzie/Kiwi robustness, sports-screens and at least some residue of an old nautical theme. The only really serious casualty of the turquoise revolution was the western gents, a Godsend to the bibulous and weak-bladdered, who must now orbit the bar in search of relief. Also probably gone are the humorous, maritime-themed plates on the loos' doors, which said (wait for it, now, folks) "Buoys" and "Gulls". Happy days. The bulldog burgers are worth a special trip even when you leave the neighbourhood. Di's Sunday lunchtime roast obviates the need for tea or supper. Speaking of dogs, the whole place is benignly ruled over by Bubbles, a minor rhapsody in fluff. Be careful which end you offer peanuts to. A drawback of Di's relaunch (in addition to the loss of those hilarious loo-signs!) is that the evening food menu is neither here nor there; we crept out and got a Chinese. The garden is garden-shaped with a fair bit of space, the obligatory decking, plastic children's equipment and a eucalyptus-tree whose leaves you can sniff but _not_ pick, thank you very much. Tubes are some way away and Brentford mainline station not much closer; some kind of E bus reputedly passes nearby. Behave yourself, eat at lunchtime rather than in the evenings, tickle Bubbles's tummy, and you and family can have a good time here. Look out for it from the starboard seats of planes on final westward approach to LHR, and give us a wave.
10 Aug 2005 15:12
Gastro, pine-floored, turquoise-ceilinged wine-bar this ain't but, as my fellow-reviewers point out, this is a pubber's pub. Sport beams from the screens, some folks look like they're registered to vote from there, and a glorious waft of diesel sometimes enters via the door to the beer-yard by the busy Great Western railway. Staff friendly and attentive; age-range reassuringly wide; some sort of table-based games visible on the south side. That yard, by the way, is no leafy rural nook. We are talking Kraftwerk industrial revolution soundtrack as the London-bound HSTs try to reach 125 mph without then slamming into the buffers at Paddington. Acton Main Line station very handy, though train-services are being constructively degraded so that some grandee can turn around one day and close it for alleged lack of demand. Buses 266 and 260 (the latter northbound only) pass, as does most of London's other traffic, it sometimes seems.
10 Aug 2005 14:51
Happy days are here again at the D of Y, after a slightly subdued patch of a few years. Might it even return to the rip-roaring era of Richard and Stephanie Sell, long retired to the south coast? They'd fix you sausage and convincingly lumpy mash shortly before closing time, as long as you could successfully negotiate your order through Maggie, the delightful but feisty barmaid. No Thai restaurateurs they. Karaoke and quizzes were never my cup of tea, so thank goodness for the conservatory-extension on the west side. Not sure if Tony, the fat controller, and chums still meet there for talk of astronomy and working for the BBC, but two faces from the old days were familiar and even recognised me. Modest, paved beer-garden rings to peals of Aussie laughter in summer. Situated on a kind of traffic-island created by road-diversions, next to a plant-hire depot, the countryside isn't worth looking out at. More real ale would be nice, and food in the evenings, like old times.
10 Aug 2005 14:41
Clean, trad d�cor. Sussex ale good. Barmaid slightly exasperated because the loos aren't well signposted, and she therefore has to keep telling people where they are (left-hand far end of the courtyard). Just a fleeting visit so no time to experience the below-mentioned characters. Very handy for the sea. Eastward views of folks eating in the windows of pricy restaurants, and of a Big Issue seller dancing.
10 Aug 2005 14:27
A jug of vinegar upset over my veggie-burger? No worries, mate. Gristle and bone in the sausages? No worries, mate. Well, actually, yes worries, mate. Also irritation (if not actual worries) at having our fairly tidy table spray-cleaned while we were still at it. This was ham-fisted, if not actually malevolent, pub-hospitality in the raw. You may not get this waiter/barman and your sausages may be bone- and gristle-free. The Sussex is well-kept and the setting very central and bustling in the Lanes. No big parties of blokes at weekends, says a notice on the door. Last night it was sparsely populated with a wide age-range. Folksy d�cor, good window-based views, though not of the sea.
10 Aug 2005 14:19
Gorgeous food, including the pizza, Caesar-salad and seafood-pasta. Spelling-mistakes on the menu don't affect the taste at all. Nice Kronenbourg Blanc; like Hoegaarden but with less suffering the morning after. Cask ale would be nice but probably wouldn't fit the young style. Handy for the forthcoming Ealing jazz-festival.
22 Jul 2005 15:27
The Grey Derby, Kennington
They closed it and painted the outside (and perhaps the inside) brown. It's now called the Brown Derby. Daren't go in.
8 Oct 2011 18:07