The Westbury, N22

This is quite a typical North London, gentrified pub located about a five-minute walk from Turnpike Lane station. It’s a fairly small, single room pub with notional drinkers’ and diners’ spaces to the front and rear respectively. The whole pub is bare boarded, with large windows along the front and left sides allowing plenty of natural light into the room. Comfy padded banquettes run under the windows along the left-hand wall, whilst high tables and stools fill the front part of the pub and basic tables and chairs occupy the larger rear dining space. The walls are mostly painted in bland shades and there's only one small section of wood panelling in the rear right corner. The servery occupies most of the right-hand wall and has a chunky dark wood counter broken by a large central pillar, and a pleasant bare brick bar back decorated with lots of pump clips and plenty of blackboards detailing draught and cocktail options plus a few upcoming events. Goldfish bowls have been positioned at either end of the bar counter, but they’ve been repurposed as plant pots. A few uninspiring modern art prints are dotted around the room, whilst the rear wall is dominated by an open kitchen, and a quick check of the menu on my table showed that mains clock in at around the £14 mark. Music was playing so quietly as to be impossible to hear at times, despite the pub being quite quiet on a Thursday evening. The pub has made it into recent editions of the Good Beer Guide and accordingly, there were four cask ales on handpull - Stewart Jack Back, Hobsons Old Prickly, Five Points Pale and St Austell Tribute, although this still meant that five pumps remained unclipped. Keg options were less interesting and included the usual mega-craft stuff from Beavertown and Brixton. The Jack Back was a nice pint, and I enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere which made it very easy to settle down and would be conducive to a longer session. This is quite a likeable pub which gets a lot of the basics right, but perhaps feels a little too stripped out and food-focussed to make it a destination in its own right. The main draw is probably the varied cask range, which should turn up an unusual beer or two and make it worth popping your head in when passing. Date of visit - 10th October 2024

This is a former Taylor Walker house, an arched sign bracket remaining, minus its gold gun carriage. It also seems that this is a conversion, formerly the Westbury Stores, dating from the start of the 20th century. This is a very stripped-out pub, with a bare brick bar back, festooned with a myriad pump clips, contemporary and predictable trendy interior, which the website describes as being ‘…clean and modern…’: white or smoky blue paint, with a pale boarded floor and spun metal lampshades. Furniture runs around the periphery, with a fawn banquette and mixed wood tables and chairs; décor amounted to a few trendy framed prints. Customers were surprisingly few in number for a Saturday at 10.00pm, but one was notable for being about eight years old, which won’t appeal to all. Also of note was a live band (on a Saturday or all things?), doing no favours to the works of Lennon and McCartney. The ale range was something of an eye opener for these parts, for aside from three unused pumps, there was Hazy Days cider, then Pride, Thornbridge Lord Marples, Redemption Big Chief and Kazbek and Five Points Pale at £2.50 a half and on great form, served by a friendly barmaid. Questionable live music aside, this was the highlight of my three-hole Tottenham crawlette, a far cry from the Fountain down the road.

Official site of The Westbury - westburyn22.co.uk

Official site of The Westbury - westburyn22.co.uk

Our final pub of the day is situated several minutes walk from Turnpike Lane tube and feels a bit out on a limb. It was fairly quiet on our Monday evening visit and was a far cry from the noisy and bustling Eastern European restaurants nearby. We couldn't even get into the Georgian restaurant next to the tube and ended up in an extremely rowdy Bulgarian between the Westbury and the station. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed this large neighbourhood pub with a couple of real ales and a cider. The bar is split into two by a large column. All handpulls are situated in the section nearest the door, whilst staff hide behind the column. We had to go to them to get served. The ales were Black Iris Let The Devil In & Dark Revolution Orbital. The cider was SeaCider Strawberry Cider. There is a kitchen at the rear, but it didn't seem to be operating that evening. I'd certainly give this place another try. But it's a pain in the back side to get to and there's not much else around locally for a decent pint.

Nice rectangular ground floor bar.Wooden floor ,brick and high tables.Nice efficient barman.Outside seating was busy Four handpumps with Rooster -kushty rye,Adnams -mosaic and Darkstar -hophead.Liked this pub a lot.