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Beer of the Week (w/e 28th April 2024) with Mobyduck
on the Pub Forum
Reviews (Current Rating Average: 6½ of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Malden man left this review about The Hope
A rather unappealing exterior with a huge and garish red neon sign belies a totally acceptable decent pub inside. Split level and with a mixture of boarded and parquet flooring, there are three distinct interconnected areas. Quite a lot going on decoratively inside as one might expect, framed portraits, circular illuminated images....no idea how else to describe, a row of domestic style mirrors, wall mounted pots and pans, shelves with kettles, weigh scales, jugs, brass plates, a pigeon hole mounting containing tins of tomatoes plus more traditionally a photo of a young Queen Elizabeth behind the bar. The bar on the back wall of the main room has a padded front, 70s style where there were four handpumps offering Volden Session Ale, Purity Mad Goose, Belleville Thames SurfIPA and Gipsy Hill Anorak Plum Mild....lovely, (£4.00).
Food is served, the Sunday roast menu was on clipboards, £12.50-£15, concerned that extra gravy is £1.50......there should always be enough to start with, so you can't see the plate.
As always with this pub group, a quirky and totally acceptable pub....apart from the gravy stinginess. Grrr.
On 22nd February 2017
- rating: 7
[User has posted 1708 recommendations about 1681 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Pub SignMan left this review about The Hope
Approaching this place late on a Friday evening, there was no doubt that I'd found the pub, thanks to the name being spelled out in huge neon letters near the entrance. Unusually for Antic, this is a new build which opened in Spring 2015. You enter into a raised seating area to the left of the main part of the pub, where you can find a decent mix of seating options and the bizarre collection of tinned tomatoes mentioned in the reviews below. Steps to the right take you down into the main bar area which sees the servery run along the rear wall with a padded counter front and plain bar back under a row of oddly arranged white tiles. A couple of high ledges opposite the bar displayed a range of brassware items and standard tables and chairs fill most of the space beyond. Large book shelves can be found on the right hand side, flanked by a few mirrors and various other decorative bits give a bit of character to the rest of the room. Windows to the front look out to some limited bench seating in a fenced off garden area of sorts. Passing to the right of the bar, some nice backlit art pieces lead you through to a right hand room with formal tables and chairs best served by diners. It's a split level room with reproductions of some well known artworks on show rounded off with modern floral wallpaper and some green and white strip lighting. The place really didn't feel like an Antic venue, despite some of the quirkier décor and I wondered if this might change over time.
Four ales were on at the bar - Roosters Leghorn, Volden Pale Ale, Ilkley Gold and Red Willow Wreckless - a pretty good selection, but my pint of Leghorn set me back £4.50 and was far from being in good condition. The staff all seemed a bit stuffy and formal and the place wasn't as lively as I'd expected on a Friday evening.
This is an unusual place that promised more than it managed to deliver. I quite liked the pub's layout and thought the ale selection was very encouraging, but this was tempered by a bad pint and muted atmosphere. I think this could be one of those visits where things just didn't click and I would be happy to give the place another try, but it didn't make the greatest of first impressions.
On 13th February 2016
- rating: 6
[User has posted 3114 recommendations about 3114 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Rex Rattus left this review about The Hope
They had a couple of Big Smoke beers on in here (Mothership and Bonfire), plus Darkstar Hophead, and Volden Vim. Volden is Antic's own brewery, which was formerly Clarence & Frederick. I didn't see a menu or any sign of food.
Being an Antic pub one expects the unuaual, and this one doesn't disappoint. I'm not sure what, if anything, this place was before Antic got their hands on it, but it certainly wasn't a pub. It looks as if it's been cobbled together from more than one building. You enter into an area where there's a fair bit of bench seating, and which has tomato cans on the wall, as decor I guess. This is bizarre even by Antic's standards. Down a few steps to the right brings you to the largest room, where the bar counter's sited at the back. This area is furnished with mainly normal tables and chairs, banquettes, and some tall tables/tall stools. Then past the bar counter there's another drinking area.
Obviously the furnishings are a recycled mish mash of different styles. In the larger middle room there are shelves with hundreds of books on them, plus some copper pans and the like as wall decor. Typically Antic eclectic. The beer was good, but being the curmudgeon that I am, I could have done without the raucus pop music. It was not busy when I was in during the late afternoon, but several of the tables had reserved signs on them suggesting that they expected to be busy later on in the evening. I felt that this bar/pub had less character than other Antic pubs that I had visited. The beer was OK, but for me it had little else going for it.
On 22nd September 2015
- rating: 5
[User has posted 2606 recommendations about 2520 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
john gray left this review about The Hope
Quite like this latest Antic pub.Tinned tomatoes ?.Two entrances lead to small drinking areas then down stairs to the main bar.Tinned tomatoes? Usual mix of weird and wonderful bits and pieces decorate the walls.I was particularly impressed with the back lit woodland scene.Tinned tomatoes.They have a small kitchen area but it looked a bit scruffy.Three handpumps I think with Clarkshaws -hellhound ipa and Antics own brewery Volden -vim 3.8 which was in good condition but dull.Did I mention the tomatoes? One wall is lined with shelves of varying sizes and displays a collection of about 600 or 700 hundred tins of Chopped italian tomatoes.All the same identical brand.
On 12th May 2015
- rating: 7
[User has posted 1023 recommendations about 1009 pubs]