Kings Head, Roehampton, SW15

Please Note: This review is over a year old.

Rex Rattus left this review about Kings Head

Young's have re-opened this erstwhile Enterprise pub, it having been closed for about six years. I suppose they will regard it as a rescue job, and on the whole I guess they are right. Being a Young's house it has the usual range of ales on of course, but I gather that they usually have a guest ale from somewhere like Sambrook's. However when I visited yesterday this was not the case - possibly to make room for the seasonal Winter Warmer. But I was a bit unlucky as the Winter Warmer finished as I arrived, and the Special I had instead was just "OK", and not cheap at £3.95 a pint.

Food looks to be the main business here - in fact their website labels it as a gastropub. It's no surprise that there's no "pub grub" on the menu. The cheapest main course is "Iron bark pumpkin, toasted chestnuts, pearl barley risotto" at £9, and the most expensive "21 day aged Riverside rib-eye, triple cooked chips, bearnaise, watercress" at £19.50. The menu didn't mention sandwiches, and desserts are £5 - £6. But the pub is obviously doing something right, as it was doing a roaring trade on New Year's Day with plenty of family groups in there.

Being a Young's house, it has obviously been thoroughly modernised. The very large conservatory room on the left, just past the open view kitchen, seems to be set aside for diners, but with drinkers being catered for by the area in front of the bar counter, the largish Hogarth Room, as well as a couple of other small rooms leading off from the main area. It's now quite a large pub of course. The furnishings are mainly normal tables and chairs, but with a liberal application of sofas. It looks like it has had an expensive refit, with good quality replacement floorboarding and a new solid wood bar counter. Pastel shdes abound of course, and there's an interesting mural in the main bar area featuring what looks like a hot air balloon-fest.

This pub is OK if you like these modernised and sanitised pubs, but it doesn't have the pub character of The Angel next door. One negative point was the smell of cooking food, and the haze it also produced, anywhere near the open view kitchen. But I would visit again in the hope that next time I might be lucky and enjoy a pint of one of their guest ales.

On 2^nd January 2013 - rating: 6
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