BITE user comments - shauntobewild
Comments by shauntobewild
Fantastic bar for losing afternoons in when you should be at work - especially when the mobile phone reception downstairs is patchy at best.
Great juke box, friendly staff, rough enough to put off tourists and most suits. Perfect. Except for one little thing, I can't take the beer any more. I don't know what it is, but 3 pints is my limit in there, then I have to move onto bottles or spirits. Any more than 3 and I get tunnel vision, my face goes numb and I've got no idea how I got home or what I did on the way. This doesn't happen anywhere else, except for Davy's in Canary Wharf and it's own beer; 1870. Still, once I've had four I might as well have 8 right?
17 May 2006 13:24
Great pub for the football. Great atmosphere on big match days, and you can see the screens from everywhere. There's still a good portion of yellow-haired Irishmen propping the bar up on any given day, and there's passable food on offer after a few drinks.
Two criticisms might be that there are not enough (good) bar staff to satiate the thirst of the patrons, and for an Irish Bar they serve the WORST pint of Guinness in North London. It's awful. Halfway down the glass the head has turned yellow, much like the Irishmen's hair, perhaps it makes them feel at home.
17 May 2006 13:04
Great pub this. Great juke box, second best in London by my reckoning and, considering how many proffessional drunks frequent the place, it's actually really, really friendly.
The booze is cheap, especially on Mondays and they have live music most nights of the week. The tables are mostly far too big for you and your mates, so the friendliness is added to by the multi-use tables. You can sit down on a table on your own for a Guinness (well kept by the way) and by the end of the night have a group of new friends.
The other great thing about here is it's a proper local, the same faces go in night on night on night. That is rare for a London pub, and London is less rich for it's lack of proper locals.
Don't bother coming here if you're wearing a suit, you will be stared at. And don't come here if you don't want to leave your inhibitions at the door and embrace the experience, it's that kind of place.
17 May 2006 12:46
This is a great pub. Just because it looks like a gastro pub doesn't mean it is - those of you who've been complaining about the food; go elsewhere, you won't be missed.
This is a good old fashioned boozer with a listed ceiling that saved the pub and the entire building from the wrecking ball years ago, and thank god it did.
The relaxed attitude of the owners and the staff means that people who turn up in a suit looking for Pinot Grigio don't feel quite comfortable here, and even better, they don't quite know why.
They've done the pub up to a good standard, keeping great original features like the huge fireplace for added atmosphere, but it hasn't been sterilised like many other gastro pubs in Kilburn, and the bar staff ignore you whether you're holding a gold card or a screwed up fiver.
Also, the dining room (which all pubs in this area seem to insist on) is nicely tucked around the corner, so you hardly notice it taking up perfectly good drinking space. Keep it up.
17 May 2006 12:37
The North London Tavern, Kilburn
What have they done to this pub? Once upon a time it looks like it was a good, honest, large, corner London boozer, and from the outside it could still pass as one.
When you go in though, it's quite a different story. It's all too often full of arty types, sipping Magners, wearing trendy short-scarves-tied-like-girls-tie-them, guffawing over their latest property purchases. It is everthing that is wrong with London pubs all rolled into one.
The Bar area is far too small and so cramped that people standing at the bar are constantly being nudged, elbowed and shoved around as they drink.
The reason the bar area is so cramped? The dining room. Yes that's right, another big, cozy London boozer taken over by a predominantly empty dining room selling over priced burgers and home made chips.
Why oh why they haven't put the dining room upstairs beggars belief, for upstairs they have a room available for private hire which sits empty all week and is hired out for 30th birthday champagne parties at the weekend. So think about that next time someone elbows your white wine all over your gucci loafers. Come on NLT, sort it out.
17 May 2006 12:19
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The William Cobbett, Farnham
This is a truly great pub slj, and a seminal one in my growing up. I've been drinking here since Iwas at College nearby and we loved it. It is a bit skanky in places and the bar staff could shower a bit more often, but whether you want to spend a summers evening in the garden, a winters night in the back room or a autumn afternoon playing pool upstairs this pub has got the lot.
17 May 2006 13:30