Home, Marylebone, W1

Facebook page of Home - www.facebook.com

Facebook page of Home - www.facebook.com

Fancy upmarket bar / restaurant in an attractive old corner pub building, heavily refurbished both inside and out, with the two parts of the main room separated with a partial screen. Also has a few small tables hidden behind the greenery screens along the main facade, and surprisingly more greenery suspended from the ceilings indoors. Seven standard keg fonts on the counter, offering the likes of Camden Hells and Pale, and my Brixton Low Voltage session IPA came in at a whopping (but not wholly unexpected, £7.90).

Yet more rebuilding from the late 18th century to the late 19th, this was originally the Old Rising Sun, as can be seen, set in stone to the exterior. This is now a style bar/restaurant with a modernised trendy interior and plants, certainly not what anyone could call a pub; my idea of a pub serves pork scratchings, not ‘truffle fries with parmesan’.

Official site of Home - homemarylebone.com

Official site of Home - homemarylebone.com

A prominent, street corner building on the Marylebone High Street, this is much more of a bar than your traditional pub although it has little in the way of any atmosphere and seems to fail somewhat on that count as well. I suppose if it were busy it may feel different, but it was very quiet (in terms of the number of punters, not the volume of music) on a recent Sunday evening visit so we only had a swift one and then went elsewhere. It’s a single room, high-ceiling bar which makes the most of it’s position with large, dual aspect windows to watch the world go by, and a number of high stools and a shelf around the perimeter assist with this. The floor is sanded wood and there are a couple of large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The end was all exposed brick and there were a few wooden chairs hanging on the wall which is presumably supposed to be arty in some way. Unfortunately there were no real les on tap, just keg Camden Hells and Meantime London Pale Ale. The solitary cider was Aspall’s Suffolk.