The Curtains Up, West Kensington, W14

Luvvies, I hovered between a 5 and a 6 for this one! It is a very pleasant corner pub, very food oriented but just a smattering of solo drinkers at my early evening visit time. The rectangular island bar with leather high stools around is attractive and the seating dotted around makes it easy at this time to find a quiet corner away from the chatter. The music was at least at a very subdued volume given it was pretty naff. The theatre is downstairs by the gents but wasn’t in play during my visit (theatre not toilet). Cask beer was dispensed from a suite of four hand pumps, three delivering Original and one kicking out Proper Job. Plenty of boring keg offerings given this is a Youngs house. So Pravha, Camden Hells, Peroni, Madri and Estrella were the lagers with Neck Oil available along with Guinness and Aspall cider. This is a very familiar line up for a Youngs pub I believe. Definitely not a range I would “break a leg” for! The venue although plush felt really soulless (OK perhaps stretching it a bit far so perhaps more appropriate to say it lacked any positive vibe). First of a short crawl around unvisited W14 venues whilst waiting for an incoming train later. Hope the ones remaining inspire a bit more than this place. Exit stage left for me here.

Official site of The Curtain's Up - www.thecurtainsup.co.uk

This is a late Victorian pub, originally known as the Admiral Palliser, the current name arriving in 1993. This is a fairly standard quite large corner pub, of which there are many in London. This would also seem to be the ‘safe’ hub where the relatively affluent locals congregate; this place is a far cry from the neighbouring hostels on the adjacent North End Road. The place has been trendified, but not radically so, looking like a contemporary pub rather than boozer. The floor is modern boarded, grey or white walls and dark blue wainscoting; above, is a white Anaglypta ceiling. The bar has a central tubular steel shelf system. Furniture is fairly normal, with some banquettes to the periphery. There are trendy framed prints, trendy sconce lights and interesting spherical fluted lamps hanging above the bar. Monotonous background music played to middle-aged customers, who may have been taking in a show at the en suite theatre. Ales amounted to Special ‘coming soon’, Proper Job ‘coming soon’ and London Original, already arrived, £2.60 a half and in moderate condition. This place isn’t too bad, certainly better than the competition nearby, but it’s not worth a special detour.

Official site of The Curtain's Up - www.thecurtainsup.co.uk

Young's Bitter, Sambrook's Junction and Pumphouse Pale, and Twickenham Grandstand (£2.30 a half) were available. Main course prices were par for the area at around £13 or £14. There's a central island servery here, surrounded by drinking areas. Sofas abound, as do tall chunky tables/tall stools, and there are recycled church chairs and dining room tables. There are knick knacks all over the place, and for some reason there's an enormous inflatable rugby ball sitting above the central stillion. There's a vase of lilies by one of the windows, some old black and white photographs on the wall, and board games and the like are available. One of the games consisted of wooden blocks that I guess you have to assemble in some way - probably has a fancy foreign name. It's that sort of place. This place is larger than it at first appears, with a large room revealed at the back after you've circumnavigated the servery. This is clearly another pub for the young and affluent with little or no olde worlde pub character left.