The Crown, Blackheath, SE3

Being a Shepherd Neame pub there are no surprises regarding the beer, with Spitfire, Whitstable Bay and Masterbrew on. I didn't see a menu, but this is the sort of place that must do food. As others have said, it's now completely opened up and completely modernised. This is the sort of pub that seems to be trying to look like a restaurant as much as a pub. As we passed through the main room at the front I noticed that modern decorative feature - a neatly arranged floor to celing display of logs next to the fireplace on the left. But the room at the back was quite comfortable, with normal tables and chairs, no TVs, a bookcase and some sporting memorabilia on the walls. There was a good amount of outside seating in a roped off area at the front of the pub. This is not the sort of pub that stands out, but the beer was OK, and it was comfortable enough sitting in the room at the back. It's nothing special, but I quite enjoyed my brief visit to this pub.

Official site of The Crown - www.crownblackheath.co.uk

Official site of The Crown - www.crownblackheath.co.uk

Situated in the centre of Blackheath, just a short walk from both the station and the heath itself, this is an extremely gentrified Shepherd Neame pub that seems to be trying to compete with the local bistros more than the neighbourhood pubs. You enter the pub through some sort of large, plate glass porch with a crown motif in the middle of the panes. It's a very unusual feature and looks very out of place on the front of an historic pub that can trace its lineage back to the 1740's. Once inside, it's just another upmarket gastro pub that greets you, with a bare boarded room and dark wood servery to the rear. The bar area is actually quite pleasant, thanks in part to the fine semi-circular bar counter and old pub mirror on the bar back. High tables and stools fill much of the space opposite, with some regular tables and chairs elsewhere and a couple of drinking shelves around the support pillars. To the left of the entrance there is a fairly homely looking area centred around a couple of fireplaces and this looked like it was probably the best spot to grab a seat. Moving past the right hand end of the bar you find a rear room (opened out into the main bar now) with more standard and fixed bench seating. There are some fine display cabinets in here with various collections of bottles and the like on show, with shelves full of dusty old books in between. One wall has been decorated with old Victorian era sporting pictures and equipment including cricket bats and hockey sticks. The pub has it's own wine bar upstairs, but this was shut when we visited, so I didn't get to snoop around. There are a few seats outside the front of the pub, which may well make for some interesting people watching, but I didn't see any kind of rear garden. Three Shep's beers made up the ale selection - Spitfire, Whitstable Bay and Late Red. We tried the Late Red, which was in good shape and noticed that the menus had details of the full Shep's range printed on them, which caused much confusion when we tried to order from it only to be told that only the three above mentioned beers were actually available. We also decided to eat here and were pleased to find that against our expectations, the food was pretty reasonably priced, with most mains costing around a tenner. The food turned out to be of a high quality and I would suggest this makes it one of Blackheath's best bets for a good value meal. It's no real surprise to find gentrified pubs in a place like Blackheath, but this one seems to have lost more of its pub character than many others in the area. It fits in with the neighbourhood fairly well and seemed to be doing decent business on a Saturday lunchtime but there are other better pubs in the area and this would only really be worth seeking out if you wanted some competitively priced food with your pint.