It’s a joy to find a proper neighbourhood pub that serves a brilliant range of beers from small producers. Hand-crafted cask ales, guest kegs, and of course an array of exotic bottles. Not that you’d need recourse to the fridge when there are around 30 beers on tap, ranging from an easy-drinking house pale ale, through aromatic weiss beer, to sour, Belgian-style gueuze, all sold by the half or pint. This pub is beer-spotters’ heaven, the brews carefully curated by enthusiastic staff who treat the establishment as if it’s their own, despite it being the fourth in a small London chain (there’s a fifth in Brighton too).
Beer alone doesn’t make a good pub. There’s no sport on TV, because there are no TV screens. Instead there are board games, including Scrabble.
The food menu is prosaic, but the execution excellent. Burgers may be ubiquitous in every new London bar, but the version here by residents Forty Burgers gives many dedicated burger joints a run for their money with delicately glazed brioche buns, moist medium-well done patty and good details – we can particularly recommend the ‘bacon dust’ chips. Heck, you might even get to like the simply-furnished surroundings, down to the Astroturfed front yard with its white picket fence.