The Old House at Home, Newnham

This is not a pub but an expensive restaurant catering for the moneyed elite. The food is good quality but poor value. There is no ambience. The clientele are distinctly hoorah henry country types - *warning* you may feel you don't belong here. The only thing it has in common with a pub is that you order at the bar - though that doesn't prevent them adding a service charge to the already astronomical bill.

23 Sep 2012 17:26

The Bell Inn, Aldworth

Well worth going miles out of your way to visit - truly an experience, like going back eighty years or so, into the atmosphere of an old English village tavern. The inside is tiny and loaded with character. The beer good, and well-kept - West Berkshire Brewery - not the most interesting beers perhaps, but somehow it seems appropriate for this pub to be serving beer brewed just up the road, so I wouldn't have it any other way - and I don't think we'll be seeing 6X or London Pride here any time soon. Didn't even notice a lager tap though they must have one. Apparently been in the same family for generations and largely unchanged in a very long time indeed - long may it remain so - an absolute gem and without doubt the most special place in Berkshire and probably for at least a fifty-mile radius.

3 Jun 2012 16:14

The Swan Inn, Stoford

No complaints about the beer - see below - and I've nothing to say about the food, which may well be excellent - but I dropped in for a drink last night, thinking this was a pub. It is not. It is a restaurant with a small side area where you can have a drink while waiting for a table. That's where we were encouraged to sit while our drinks were brought to us by a waitress. We were the only people in there who were not dining (even though it was only 5pm), and there was, needless to say, no atmosphere. I enjoyed the beer but not the occasion, and my mood went down another peg when I asked for the bill. Maybe I'm living in a dream world but this was the most expensive pint I've ever had, at �3.48. When I questioned it, the landlord tried to pal up with me, blaming the price on the brewery - and they're putting the prices up again next week. Well I won't be going there next week, so they can do what they like with the prices. On the basis that this is a pub review site, and the Swan@stoford (as the sign irritatingly has it) is simply not a pub, I was inclined to rate it zero. However, as the beer was excellent - I had the beautifully-kept TT Landlord, and they also had a tempting Otter and a Hop Back - I was going to rate it 3 - but then I thought again about the ripoff prices and knocked it back to 2.

25 Jan 2010 09:18