Tulse Hill Hotel, Tulse Hill, SE24

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Pub SignMan left this review about Tulse Hill Hotel

Landmark hotel-style pub on a busy junction just over the road from Tulse Hill station. You enter through a small front patio seating area to a rather swanky looking front room with dark wood flooring and similarly dark walls, which combined to create a bit of a gloomy feeling on a very hot summer’s day, but I can imagine it might feel quite welcoming in colder months. Plenty of basic and comfortable seating has been mixed in throughout the room, offering a good choice of places at which to settle down. The servery is on the rear wall and has a nice dark wood counter and a fairly standard, characterless bar back. Beyond the bar, there is a large space full of formally set tables, which didn’t seem very welcoming to the casual drinker. This area is marginally brighter than the front room, thanks mainly to walls painted in lighter shades and some rear doors that can be opened out to the garden. I noticed some smart frosted panes and original woodwork, but overall, I found the place awkward and difficult to warm to, so I retreated to the nice, green-fringed patio garden which has bench booths around the perimeter and lots of typical garden furniture through the centre, with a pop music soundtrack playing which wasn’t audible within the pub.
There are five handpulls on the bar and the options on this visit were By The Horns Tropika, Greene King IPA and Truman’s Swift. A real cider made up the numbers, with the final pull left unclipped. The Tropika was a hefty £4.70 a pint and really rather poor – probably a victim of the extreme weather and perhaps not reflective of the usual standard of beer quality.
This is quite a nicely presented pub with a pleasant garden and comfortable seating areas. I found it a bit tricky to settle down in this pub and was glad it was still warm enough to enjoy the garden on my late-evening visit. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on the ale quality and might consider a revisit when I’m next passing.

On 25^th November 2019 - rating: 6
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