The Plough Inn, South Ealing

I live in Northfields and while this is probably the furthest local pub from me it is my favourite. It�s not all sunshine and kittens (what is he talking about) butI like the Plough for a lot of different reasons.

The front of the pub is very much like a front room, lots of lamps, bookshelves and soft furnishings make it a very comfortable place for a drink. At the back there is a large dining area and is much more of a standard gastro pub affair. Past the dining area is a large beer garden with outdoor heaters and penned in climbing frame for the kids. The garden is great during the summer and in the winter due to the heaters and it�s so large that it�s unlikely that you�ll have to wait too long for a seat.

The Plough is the sort of place to come if you want a quiet drink or a chat with your mates. The pub is open until 12 most days and until 1 on Friday and Saturday making it a great place to wind down the night (unless you�re on a mad one). The patrons are pleasant and there�s normally a nice, low-key buzz about the place. The staff are all very friendly and are, on the whole, not bad at what they do. I�ve only had to have a go at a member of staff for shoddy service twice in the 4 years I�ve been drinking there (I�m an intolerant sod). The quiz night always pulls a crowd although it�s hard as pub quizzes go. There are a couple of regular quiz teams who ALWAYS win so if you want to take part please have the phrase �It�s not the winning but the taking part that counts� firmly in mind. Despite all that good stuff The Plough is a little impersonal, it�s unlikely that you�ll get chatting to anyone you didn�t walk in with and the staff, although professionally friendly, aren�t particularly chatty. I expect that sort of anonymity in an All Bar One but it is a little surprising in a Fuller�s pub like the Plough.

The bar has a good permanent selection of lager and a few that are rotated reasonably regularly although these tend to be continental lagers and weiss beers. Being a Fuller�s pub it has a respectable collection of beers (ales/bitters). The collection firmly enters �expansive� territory when you include the multitude of obscure bottled beers ranging from South African ciders to European fruit beers and on to beers you don�t find in every pub like Newcastle brown ale. The beers are very nice and the lagers are great, cold, clean and with plenty of life. I can�t comment on the quality of the wine list as I�ve never bought a bottle from the Plough but what I can tell you is that it�s reasonably long and the prices vary from cheap to quite expensive.

Despite the slightly gastro pub feel of the dining area I find the food to be surprisingly shoddy. I�ve eaten there on more occasions than I should have and, with the exception of the house burger (which isn�t the best to be had locally anyway), I�ve been unimpressed. My Jambalaya was insipid and watery, the haddock fishcakes were bland, under seasoned and had far to much potato in them, the vegetarian lasagna had no body, their wedges look like they�ve seen the fryer twice an night for the 3 nights they�ve been languishing in the kitchen and even their tuna mayo sandwich was poor as they clearly hadn�t drained the tuna properly leading to �slop in damp bead�. I�ve not tried the Sunday roast but I wouldn�t chance ruining an event like that by having it in the Plough.

A previous reviewer labeled the place as �pretentious� and I can only assume they�re one of those people with a class fixation. True there are a lot of middle class people around on the busier weeknights but they just keep to themselves like everyone else and the other drinkers are neither snooty nor socially intimidatory. Myself and my friends fall firmly into the �working class� category and the old boys who drink there were all tradesmen (growing up around Northfields meant I know most of them) so don�t let that previous comment put you off.

The place is, unfortunately, child friendly but either because the climbing frame if fenced off or because the area has many more established families (with no young children) than young ones the kids never become bothersome unlike a lot of other pubs/restaurants in Ealing.

The music is a mixture of lounge and jazzy/deep house and suits the overall relaxed atmosphere of the place. As was mentioned before the first and third Thursdays of the month are jazz nights and guarantee that the place will be filled to the rafters. As a fan of dance music and after numerous disappointing Jazz festivals I was initially skeptical about the jazz nights but the music is fantastic and it�s made that much better by having the music performed live by a set of well seasoned and charismatic (they often pick up the mic between songs) musicians.

All in all a great pub for people who've grown out of the whole 'going out and getting smashed' scene (although I do get plastered in there quite regularly).

7 Nov 2008 15:17

The Spinning Wheel, Northfields

I live just down the road from the Spinner and I�ve been drinking in the since before I was legal so I�ve seen a lot of change in the old place. There�s nothing high brow about the place, it�s a good old fashioned boozer, the type of which is becoming rarer and rarer these day (not sure if that�s a good or bad thing). It�s a pub of regulars; even if you�re not on speaking terms with everyone you�ll recognize half the crowd. When it�s quiet the bar staff are friendly and more than happy to speak to you.

The golden rules of the place revolve around the owner/publican and the manager (of sorts) and are as:

*Buy a drink - Too many people wander in to watch the match and try to get away without buying a drink and Kieran, the publican, won�t have it.
*Treat the place like someone else home � Otherwise you�ll upset Shamus, the bar manager and that is not advisable.
*Don�t be rude or come looking for trouble � There�ll be no warning, you�ll be out on your ear and barred in a heart beat.

If you can follow that, pretty reasonable, set of rules then it�s the place for a relaxing drink. True both the publican and the manager are more than a little irritable but both ARE more than friendly if you show them respect and they treat regulars better than a lot of places I drink.

At the weekend it�s open late (1 or 2), has live music and is generally packed. Just make sure to get in there before 8 unless you want to pay to get in (which I think is a little Cheeky). It�s very much like an Irish �club� in that you get a slightly older crowd (late 30�s � late 40�s), everyone�s chatty and there�s a lot of dancing. It�s when the footie�s on that this place really comes alive. The place gets packed out if the game is on sky and there�s a great atmosphere. The layout of the place is dictated by two support struts that make the place a little less than ideal for viewing the tv or the projection screen but there�s loads of high seats that you can move around to a comfy spot. During the Champion�s League both matches will often be showing on the opposing screens due to the pub�s two Sky subscriptions so you�re unlikely to miss a televised match. Outside of these times, though, the place is dead. You�ll still see a number of the regulars in there and if you get on with the bar staff then you might find it worth your while to pop in for a swift pint.

The selection of beers is a real late 90�s Irish pub fair � Foster�s, Carlsburg, John Smiths, Guiness, Kronenburg, Stella and Strongbow. The bottled selection isn�t much to write home about either � Corona, Peroni, Becks, Magner�s and Bud. The draught lagers aren�t very good, there�s a good bit of life in them but they taste like they�ve been hanging around a bit. The pub is clean and tidy. There�s wood everywhere like Irish pubs up and down the country. When there�s not a live band on it�s a mix of 80�s classics which, personally, annoys me but some of my friends seem to like it (or the irony of it).

As a happening bar � rubbish 4/10, as a good old pub � not bad at all 8/10.

6 Nov 2008 18:13

The New Inn, Ealing

Loved the Sunday roast in there until two weeks ago and it was ruined for no reason I can think of other than greed. The food is great and up until my last visit it had been quick enough to get served but everything seems to have gone to pot. More tables had been jammed into the main dining room than necessary, forcing the manager to close the french doors at the back of the room. Combine this with the heated carvery and the room was became quite an efficient blast furnace. FAR too many people were allowed into the pub once the seating capacity had been met meaning that there were people waiting to eat, with no seats, were just milling around and jostling in every available bit of floorspace. The almost unbelievable number of parents were happy to let the throngs of children they had brought with them run rampant around the dining area. It is obvious that children don't like civilized or relaxed dining and rapidly become bored. I wish people would refrain from bring them to restaurants/carveries. The wait in the queue to get served the roast was a joke. After standing there for twenty minutes (I am in no way exagerating) in the sweltering heat I wanted to grad the listless staff serving the food at a snails pace a shake to wake them up!

Six days a week the place is actually a pub. While the selection of beer isn't the best in the world the larger is generally of a good standard. Steer clear of the peanuts out of the airtight jars behind the bar though, it's like someone emptied a bottle of vegetable oil over them so they'll make you feel terrible.

The staff do not strike me as terribly competent so I am reluctant to visit the pub when it's particularly busy.

The pub fancies itself as a bit of a football pub with a projection screen and a plasma in the main bar but, unfortunately, the layout of the pub is completely unfit for purpose. Unless you're lucky enough to get a seat (which is so rare I suspect the people who are sitting have been planted, before opening, to make you think the place is livelier than it is) you have to stand next to the bar to be able to see the projection screen as the placement of the plasma mean about 6 people can see it at any one time. The necessity to place yourself next the bar effectively creates a cordon around the bar meaning getting served if you're located anywhere else in the pub is a real pain.

The pub is much better when it's quiet. 6.5/10

6 Nov 2008 15:36