Herne Tavern, Forest Hill

20 years ago the Herne used to be my local, it was a nice pub with a decent clientele and kept good beer even if Eric was the grumpiest landlord ever, his Missus was golden and the rest of the bar staff were a worthy addition.

Fast forward to last weekend and a reunion with 12 friends and my goodness me what a transformation, I was aware The Herne now bills itself as child friendly but without any exaggeration I reckon there were between 40-50 kids under 10 in there, everywhere. Free-range organic kids largely unsupervised whilst presumably the parents sat with other parents leaving them to it.

Our first ordered drinks, a pint of Timmy Taylor's Landlord and an Aspall's cider and the till rung out at �8.60!!! I pay less in the west End of London and the Landlord was awful!

I moved on to Guinness next and again, an awful pint I could not finish moving on to bottled Peroni. We left after 2.5 hours mercifully we had a table booked for a meal, had we been planning on being in for the night we'd have gone elsewhere.

Seriously bad, as polite and keen to serve as the staff were you cannot serve bad beer and have more kids than a school playground at break time and call yourself a pub!

12 Apr 2012 10:27