The Queens Head, Rye

This is a very quirky pub that I didn’t personally warm to. But it has a good rep locally, especially for its standard pub grub, so perhaps the problem was that there were not many people in on this early bank holiday lunchtime and I wasn’t eating. Maybe it has a different vibe when there’s a crowd in of an evening. You enter onto the front section of a U shaped bar. To the right is a slightly elevated section dominated by a pool table with some standard keg fonts. The the lounge area is to the left section of the bar which has four hand pumps on it at the far end. For the record only two of these were in operation with Lakedown Brewing Sussex Pale and Lister’s Brewery Happy Hound. I tried both and they were in good condition, but I was surprised by the Listers Happy Hound that was described as a traditional session ale on the pump clip and turned out to be a dark mild. It’s in this section to the left that the fun starts decor wise. I would say that the chosen decor style is junk shop / reclaimed skip. I’m sure other more knowledgeable people than me will have a more accurate description for the eclectic mix of furniture and artwork that abounds in this place. To me it just seemed to be a competition to see how many different seating styles and table styles you can fit in one pub. For example I chose to sit by the window and my table was made out of a lump of concrete that had a lump knocked out of it so that you could see the reinforcement wires and that the concrete was inlaid with coloured stones. I just sat there thinking why ?. But this side of the pub keeps on giving and has a full on Tardis effect. As well as the front and back sections on the left hand side ( with a smallish courtyard garden beyond these), there is what looks like a further room between them. However, you enter to find that it turns right into a corridor with a doctors library effect going on ( including a medical skeleton) that after a while leads to a Tudor effect dining area with gable ceiling. And here again, the game seems to be how many different types of dining chair can you fit in one space. To be fair this type a junk / antique style is the same as employed in the Waterworks micropub further down the road. But whereas there it seems to fit and work, here I just got the feeling I had gate crashed a hippy commune.

I visited the Queens Head late on Tuesday evening last week when the pub was very quiet, except for a quintet of banjo strummers who were sat in the left hand bar. At the rear of this bar is a dining area and access to a backyard where there is some covered and uncovered seating. After being directed to the toilets by the polite barman I found myself in the right hand bar where there were a couple of blokes playing pool whilst the jukebox played some low background music. The two bars are separate enough to avoid a conflict of sound. The bar supports four hand pumps that were drawing Franklins’ Mama Knows Best and English Garden alongside Long Man Brewery’s APA and Morland’s Old Speckled Hen. The draught selection is pretty limited with Fosters, Kronenburg and Murphy’s Stout being available alongside Strongbow original (apple) and their new pear cider. The kitchen was closed during my visit, but I noted that the mains are priced around the £8.50 mark. This pub doesn’t open until noon every day, but there is a late license until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.