The Royal Oak, Marylebone, W1

This is a single room, open plan pub on a quiet street corner down a side street close to Marylebone Station. The bare boarded room has a corner entrance and large windows along the front and right sides. The servery is to the left and has a cool counter front with a decorative, modern woodwork design, plus a very wide, white tile bar back. Seating through the centre and to the right is a mix of basic tables and chairs plus some comfy looking button backed banquettes, with a small divider part way into the room helping to create front and rear sections of sorts. The walls have textured wallpaper beneath a dark painted frieze with a trophy and ribbon motif, and have been decorated with contemporary art and a few blackboards listing various food and drink options. A lot of the tables had seemingly been rearranged to cater for a large group, so the centre of the room was practically empty, with loads of standing room - I'm not sure it's always like this, so the spacious feel I got from this visit may not translate when the furniture is all back in its usual place. Potted plants have been arranged along the divider, but there are no real soft furnishings, so the noise on a Saturday night was intense, to the point that the music could barely be heard. Two cask ales were on handpull - Taylors Landlord at £5.90 a pint and Harveys Sussex Best, with a third pump left unclipped. The barman was a bit distant and the large group meant that I ended up having to drink at the bar for a lack of other seating options. The Landlord was in fairly good nick and the atmosphere was better than in other pubs I visited in the area on a Saturday night. This felt like a pretty functional pub with a couple of standard ale options, basic interior design and decent seating options. They haven't done a lot to make this place stand out from the crowd and I'm sure it will be destined to barely registering in my memory by the end of the year, but it did its job for a quick pint and wouldn't be somewhere I'd object to returning to. Date of visit - 16th March 2024

The Royal Oak is a corner pub with picnics out front. Inside there is a bar on the left wall that supports premium keg and three hand pumps. One was unused so the cask options were Harvey’s, Best and TT Landlord. There is some banquette seating with a few high tables. The staff were friendly and the Harvey’s was good, but the atmosphere stretched little further than the instrumental background music.

Corner pub in Marylebone that appears to be more focused on food than drink. Although I was the only customer throughout my Monday lunchtime visit, with the brief arrival of a delivery driver being the only thing to break the monotony. Two of the three handpulls were clipped, with Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter & Timothy Taylor Landlord available. The craft beer selection was similarly uninspiring. Although there were some more unusual offerings in bottles in the fridges, which tempted me to have a second drink after starting on the Landlord. The interior has already been well described, but is now starting to look a bit shabby in places, with some of the seating ripped and damage to one of the ceiling panels. A new pub for me, but one I probably won't be rushing back to. Although, it is fairly convenient for Marylebone station.

This place started life in 1807 though the current guise was rebuilt in 1900, making it late Victorian rather than Edwardian, as claimed on the pub’s website. This was another first in here the other night and having just come from the Thornbury Castle across the road, the two are like chalk and cheese. This initially looks like a gastropub but isn’t as food revolves around the humble American burger and his trusty sidekick, French fries. The interior is typical of the type and largely predictable with lots of dark grey paintwork, a distressed dark brown probably modern boarded floor, an encaustic polychromatic tiled bar apron and glazed white tiling in place of a bar back; some fluted columns and a panelled ceiling momentarily pique the visitor’s interest. Furniture is a mixture of the fairly modern though traditional, with some high tables and stools. Despite – or because of – the early hour, the pub was absolutely heaving; getting to the bar was an ordeal. Service was slow and confused, not helped by some of the customers queue barging; the staff should have been on the ball, serving those who obviously came first rather than spoke first. Ales: 12 keg lines, thereafter one pump – unused - then Twickenham’s Grandstand (the rugby’s on), Hiver’s Honey IPA and Brick’s Kinsale Best at £2.40 a half (take note Thornbury Castle) though it tasted a little off. The mediocre, poorly trained staff don’t lend much appeal to this place and the rude, jostling customers are a deterrent. Poorly-kept ale isn’t exactly a selling-point either, so I don’t feel the urge to return, especially with the TC across the road. Closed on Sundays.

Corner pub with bar to the left. Four hand pumps, one reversed. There was a 4.9% ABV on offer which I tried. Not too bad a place.