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Pub Review: Lord Hood

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Lord Hood
300 Creek Road SE10 9SW

Back in 2005-06 there was a local campaign to ‘Save the Hood’ when its existence was threatened by council plans for redevelopment. According to its website, the pub’s patrons won out with some stellar arguments about its being 200 years old, “friendly to women” and “not a wine bar”. With that kind of progressive thinking how could the council bring in the JCBs, right? Unfortunately for the Lord Hood, I can’t find much to savour in its salvation.

To start with the positive, the exterior is actually rather promising. Nothing flashy but with an old town house pub look and a bit of greenery it looks like a welcoming, unpretentious sort of place. However, there’s a line between ‘unpretentious’ and ‘not trying at all’, and once you get inside you realise that this place has long since crossed that line. It has the shabby red velvet and dark wooden bar stool thing going on, with a dartboard and pool table, but it all looks like no-one’s touched (read: cleaned) anything for 20 years +.

We got a few good hard stares from the locals when entering; they were about 6 in number and made up the entire clientele. The Internet buzz about this place is that it’s all about the Live Music – especially jazz and folk – but thank goodness for beardy musicians because there was little sign of the 60 people who apparently attended the ‘Save the Hood’ meetings and I wonder how this pub would survive otherwise.

The service was a little unfriendly and the barmaid seemed pretty put out when we asked what selection of ciders they had – Magners and Strongbow, which is pretty indicative of the average drinks selection. The beer garden doesn’t add much either: perhaps I was too harsh on the Pilot Inn, as the Lord Hood’s concrete patio slab adjacent to the main road certainly made me wish I were back at GMV.

I acknowledge that the Live Music here can be a huge draw for many and that a good gig can really make a place. Therefore I reserve ultimate judgement on this place until I check out the Jazz, but frankly I can’t think of any other reason I would want to go to the Lord Hood again.


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Pub Review: The Pilot Inn

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The Pilot Inn
8 River Way, SE10 0BE

Greenwich Millennium Village is a strange place. Despite being the nearest you can get to the tube in this part of town, having the mammoth o2 on its doorstep and being a hefty residential stronghold, it somehow always feels like you’re in the middle of a computer-generated environment, miles from anywhere. The Pilot, GMV’s ‘local’, is much in keeping with its sim-city surroundings and despite being generally ok, it lacks a lot of the character that makes the town pubs successful.

Owned by uber-chain Fullers, the Pilot ticks most of the corporate pub boxes with a wide lager selection, Rosé in bulk and every flavour of j2o you could want. However, there’s a decided mediocrity about the place, with its uninspiring ale selection, forgettable décor and split-level interiors that make it disjointed and a little unwelcoming. The food is rather expensive (£10 for Scampi & Chips), and again, pretty middle of the road. The staff, apart from a standard issue try-hard manager, are a little on the gruff, robotic side – when I asked the barman if I could order food his reply was ‘Yeah why not?’, before taking a good 5 minutes to process my order for one meal. They also had a seafood specials promotion going on, but at 6pm on a Saturday they had crossed 5 out of 7 meals off the list, as they were unavailable.

Despite all this, the Pilot does have one saving grace in its spectacular beer garden. The water features, hanging baskets and ivy fences all look like they’ve been given the creative effort and thought that the rest of the place so conspicuously lacks and it’s a lovely place to sit with your Magners. There’s even a BBQ stand where they apparently cook sausages and burgers in the summer (assuming they have any left). Its only slight drawback is that it being north facing and fully enclosed, it does get rather chilly, but then this is Britain so perhaps I’m expecting too much!

All in all I think the Pilot is trying to be a country pub in a city spot and it’s this air of artifice and sterility that lets it down. It’s certainly not the most terrible pub you’ll ever go to and the garden is definitely worth a look, it’s just that it all left me feeling a bit cold. And not just because I forgot my jacket.

Pub Review: The Ship and Billet

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The Ship & Billet
1, Woolwich Road, SE10 0RA

I actually meant to go to the Ship and Billet on last week’s pub review outing, but when circumstances compelled me to go solo I was far too scared to go into this pub on my own. Its run-down exterior with heavily tinted windows and general demeanour of a ‘local pub for local people who aren’t me’ were just too, well, scary. This week, feeling braver (and having a male companion) I ventured in and, as is the case with most scary things, was left wondering what all my fuss was about.

Let’s be clear, the Ship and Billet is about as far from the usual Greenwich Gastropub as you can get. It looks a bit like the Queen Vic would look if left unattended for a few years, with a faded red and gold pub issue carpet and sparsely furnished. The ‘no smoking’ sign was written on a post it note and whilst waiting for our drinks someone actually came up to us and asked us if we wanted to buy a ‘second hand’ TV from a carrier bag. All the other clientele, about 7 of them, seemed to know each other and spoke in a language that, though English, was completely incomprehensible.

Despite all this, I didn’t feel at all uncomfortable there. The locals were smiling enough and the barmaid was the most friendly I’ve yet to encounter in a Greenwich pub. She was chatty, made a few jokes and when the first pint of Guinness was not a success, she gave it to us for free. That level of service would be classed as exceptional anywhere.

The extras are also fuss-free: Sky TV for the sport, a cockney pianah in the corner and karaoke on the weekends with ‘Dave the Rave’. The staple of the bar is lager and cider so there’s no ale, few wines and spirits, and food is scant unless you count 17 bags of scampi fries as sustenance.

All in all the Ship and Billet is not the place to go if you are after a posh pub experience – it’s grubby, shabby, still a bit scary and definitely a local’s pub – but there’s a warm welcome here and absolutely zero pretension, which in this neck of the woods is a rare find. As Delboy said to Rodney, probably in this pub in fact, “he who dares, wins”.

What do you think of the Ship & Billet? Post your comments below…


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Pub Review: The Royal Standard, SE3

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The Royal Standard
44, Vanbrugh Park, London, SE3 7JQ

The Orchid Group’s Royal Standard is a bit like the politician of local pubs – it surfs firmly down the middle ground, trying extremely hard to cater for all tastes. And though it’s a smart outfit that creates a general air of comfort and doesn’t charge you extra for its Wisteria free chimneys, all in all it’s just a bit bland.

The Royal Standard is a large, open pub in three distinct areas; the ‘bloke’s’ area at one end has high stools and a big plasma screen, the focal point bar and plenty of standing room sits nicely in the middle, with the more upmarket leather sofas and spider plants rounding things off at the other end. Its size doesn’t let it be cozy, but it does at least allow one to sit down.

The Royal Standard takes no risks with the bar fare or the menu, pushing a very slight ‘Best of British’ angle whilst still offering mediocre Pinot Grigio and bowls of Nachos. The staff are nice and smart, though like many other local pubs a few more smiles and a bit more chat wouldn’t go amiss.

The cries of ‘Yeah’ and ‘Come On’ from the blokes’ corner (Man United were losing at that point) didn’t seem to intrude on all the generally mixed clientele, and there were also a notable number of solo customers making themselves at home with their laptops, newspapers, or simply just a pint. Obviously a good place to go to catch up on your reading.

Since they’ve put in so much effort it would be unfair not to mention the pub’s other extensive offerings: quiz nights, Sunday roasts, advance booking, wifi internet access and fairtrade espresso coffees. Phew. The Royal Standard certainly ticks all the boxes, it’s just that in trying so hard to please everyone it doesn’t seem to really stand for anything. Just like a good politician, really.


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Pub Review: The Plume of Feathers

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The Plume of Feathers
19 Park Vista, SE10 9LZ

A slice of history

Trading on a 400 year legacy that makes it the oldest pub in Greenwich, the Plume of Feathers has obviously worked hard to maintain and market its quaint English charm. The result is a welcoming, traditional pub, short on space but big on character.

The green tiled exterior and hanging baskets create a pleasant aspect on one of the prettiest streets in the town, and it’s location off the main road gives it a less ‘city’ feel than other places in the area. Though brewery owned, it has the atmosphere of being family run, as the interior walls are covered with historical memorabilia: slightly dodgy painted plates, pictures of Greenwich old and photographs of what are presumably old landlords or notable Greenwich residents. All a bit random, but not totally out of place here.

There are a couple of real ales to choose from amongst an otherwise fairly predictable selection, and the service is efficient, if a little unsmiling. There is also food on offer, a surprisingly modern selection including vegetarian mezze and quesadillas as well as the obligatory burgers and chips. Somehow reading about stuffed vine leaves on a home made laminated menu is a little odd, but as a vegetarian I am grateful for the effort.

There is a lovely beer garden out back and the place is clearly family friendly. I did find it a little uncomfortable sat on bar stools that were slightly too large for the tables, but I guess it hasn’t changed a lot over the years and people were smaller then! One thing I will say is that although it is ‘oldie worldy’, the pub is very clean and that gives it a big tick in my book.

I stayed longer at the Plume of Feathers than I have at a pub for a while, so that’s a good indication of how comfortable I was in there. I would go again.

What they say: “Attracting locals, walkers and some tourists, the place gets packed and buzzes with a lively, congenial atmosphere.” Plume of feathers website

What you say: “I like that it isn’t totally full and has a wide selection of drinks, which is good as I drink Pernod!” Fellow Customer.

What do you think of the Plume of Feathers? Post your comments below…

Andrew Gilligan: Top Dog

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I KNOW this site is called Greenwich.co.uk, but today I’m going to skip bail and write about the glory that is Deptford.

That is not, by the way, the heavy-handed sarcasm you sometimes find on lesser websites. Deptford really is a kind of miracle. Three fishmongers! No supermarkets! A thriving street market with knobbly vegetables! Surely there must be some plan to ruin it?

Oddly enough, this does not appear to be the case. True, a few years ago, leaflets with all the most dreaded danger words – “vibrant,” “Richard Rogers,” “continental-style piazza” – appeared, promising the “regeneration” of the Creekside area (that is, the construction of the usual crappy towers of “luxury apartments”.) The recession, thank God, seems to have killed that one off. Even bankers have their uses.

A redevelopment plan for the railway station and the area around it is, it transpires, going ahead. But in something unprecedented in the annals of “regeneration,” it may actually be better – or at least no worse – than what’s there now. I will miss the atmospheric old station, but suppose I may be in a minority. Most of the rest of Deptford High Street will be staying, and the buildings that are getting knocked down are mostly rubbish.

In the seventeenth century, Deptford gave us the diarist John Evelyn; in the sixteenth century it took away from us the playwright Christopher Marlowe (murdered in a local tavern – what a Deptford death); but in the twenty-first century, I think, what Deptford has given London is a potential model for subtle, non-destructive gentrification.

Nowhere can remain in a timewarp, and the area certainly needs more money in it. This is happening – there are, if you look carefully, quite a lot of bourgeois, Guardian-reading types in Deptford – but unlike in so many areas they seem to have arrived without overwhelming the existing residents.

Apart from a few fairly low-key outposts of the Converse-wearing classes – a couple of pubs, the railway carriage cafe, some arty things – the ordinary life of SE8 goes on without wall-to-wall estate agents, destination bars, cappucino shops, and all the other things that have spoiled Stoke Newington and Hoxton.

You can see this in places like my new favourite pub, the Dog and Bell in Prince Street. I have cycled past this place on my way home hundreds of times, but usually too late at night to go in. This week I happened to be passing at 9pm and what a find it was.

Time Out, London’s most reliably stupid magazine, describes the Dog and Bell as “Deptford’s best bar. That it’s dark, foreboding and located in no man’s land matters not a jot.” I suspect all this “matters not a jot” because none of it is actually true. The Dog and Bell is not “foreboding,” or even what they presumably meant to say, forbidding. It is not “dark.” It is not “located in no man’s land,” as if Prince Street was somehow West Belfast. Above all, of course, it is not a “bar.” It is a pub – a traditional backstreet pub – and one of the most perfect examples of the species I know.

There are wooden benches, yellow walls (would you say yellow was a “dark” colour? I wouldn’t), an open fire, mirrors with Fullers adverts. There are, I’m told, outstanding real ales (I wasn’t drinking). There is a warm welcome and decent food. There is even a skittles table (Time Out thinks it’s a billiards table) – which was, at the time I visited, being played on by a bloke in a flat cap and muffler and a bloke in a waistcoat.

Now our two players on the skittles were almost certainly middle-class: “aesthetically, it’s a very nice table,” one of them said. But it still felt right because the clientele was mixed and the place didn’t feel in the slightest bit ponced-up.

What’s Deptford’s secret? I think, perhaps, one reason it has not reached a critical mass of Guardianistas is that there’s very little period housing. Over the last twenty years, the London bourgeoisie have swarmed all over Zone Two in search of anything with sash windows. Not many of those in Deptford. Long may it stay scruffy and faintly rough, keeping to its path of gentle social change.

ARTDOG at The Duke

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ARTDOG represents artists in South East London and creates quality exhibitions in accessible places like pubs and hotels. They’ve got a series of exhibitions at The Duke in Creek Road, which re-opened as a gastro pub last October.

Currently showing is Eleanor Havsteen-Franklin – a Danish born artist who finished her MA in Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts. Eleanor’s pieces will be on show until the end of January.

From February 1st to March 29th, pieces by Timothy Sutton will be shown. Tim specialises in contemporary portraits and will there in person for a private viewing on February 7th, between 3.30 and 6.30.

The Duke is at 125 Creek Road and you can find out more about the project by visiting the ARTDOG website.

Last Orders

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The Greenwich Union and The Richard I pubs

THEY’VE just tarted up the Richard I, in Royal Hill, and I don’t like it. It’s not a disaster. They haven’t destroyed the place. But almost everything they have done is slightly wrong, and is clearly the work of people without any real feeling for a traditional pub.

The old-fashioned light fittings inside the main front windows have been replaced with large, bulbous globes of the kind you see in shopping-centre coffee chains. More of these things appear above both bars.

The saloon bar has been carpeted, in a carpet that would be attractive in a modern restaurant, but is not right here. The floor in the public bar, and all other wooden surfaces, have been varnished to within an inch of their lives. The yellowing old walls have been blandly repainted. Standard-issue café-bar type furniture has joined the pub tables and chairs. In a pub once known for its resistance to canned music, canned music now plays. An “Abba themed 60s and 70s party” is promised.

I know pubs are having an even worse time than the rest of us at the moment. Like small shops and post offices, they’re one of those bedrocks of England that increasingly aren’t there any more; even before the recession, it was reported that five a day were closing.

The Richard I is clearly trying to move away from the problematic pub category, into the territory of the café-bar. But it risks being an unhappy compromise, sacrificing the distinctive for the generic.

The fact is that pure-breed, slightly scruffy traditional pubs, of the kind the Richard I now half-isn’t, are now rarer and more interesting than café-bars. Many have either closed, or been converted to a small number of distinctly tired formulae.

There’s the youth drinking warehouse. The High Street chain pub, with its Sky Sports, predictable décor and accessories (job-lots of second-hand books on a shelf high up the wall, you know the sort of thing.) And the gastro-pub, where it’s the menu that’s often predictable (venison sausages and mash, sticky toffee pudding.)

The curse of the pub trade is partly the smoking ban, changing drinking habits and social patterns – the smoking ban, in particular, has done great damage and there is further New Labour nannying, such as price controls and happy-hour bans, to come. But perhaps the biggest problem is the rise, over the last twenty years, in pub corporate ownership.

Pubs used to be owned mainly by breweries, but in the early 1990s this was restricted. They are now owned mainly by a handful of giant pubcos, effectively property companies which brew no beer. Publicans allege that the pubcos, which are mostly heavily indebted, try to squeeze too much from their assets. And what’s undeniable is that, like the chaining of shops, the chaining of pubs has led to a loss of imagination and variety.

The Richard I may be one of the roughly 10,000 British pubs still owned by a brewery, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped it being affected by the trends in the rest of the sector. There’s a need for real action to save our pubs, unless we want another national institution to be destroyed.

Greenwich was, and indeed still is, a bit of a pub island: in a London of closed-down and tarted-up hostelries, relatively few of our pubs have shut or become formulaic. Let’s hope I’m overreacting to the Richard I; let’s hope it doesn’t herald further local disappearances of originality and character.