The Gipsy Queen Tavern, NW5

Facebook page of The Gipsy Queen Tavern - www.facebook.com

Official site of The Gipsy Queen Tavern - gipsyqueentavern.co.uk

Facebook page of The Gipsy Queen Tavern - www.facebook.com

Official site of The Gipsy Queen Tavern - gipsyqueentavern.co.uk

Corner pub not too far from Gospel Oak Overground station. The front room is semi-circular with tiling around the bar and bare boards beyond. There are some portraits on the walls and other ephemera such as a stuffed magpie behind the bar. There are lots of windows overlooking the street. So, it is presumably fairly bright during the day. Music was playing fairly loud and as I sat at the bar, I became aware of the pub quickly filling up for the Sunday speed quizzing competition. It was a fairly young crowd. So, this must be a fairly trendy thing to do. In addition, there were at least 3 TVs, with Six Nations rugby advertised. The pub also hosts disco nights and there is a strangely timed happy hour from 7-10pm on a Friday. To the rear of the bar, there is a pizza kitchen and further seating in a much quieter space. I witnessed a pizza being delivered to a table. It was massive and smelt very tempting. There is also a garden signposted to the right-hand side of the bar. The 2 barmaids were easy on the eye and the 4 handpumps sported Hammerton N1 & Twickenham Naked Ladies (no pun intended). The other 2 sticks were unclipped. Craft beers included Hammerton Swiss Prisms & Panama Creature, Jiddler's Tipple Jacob's Kriek & Everyday Pale Ale, Big Smoke Cold Spark, Vocation Death By Cherries & Hackney Boogie Van & Mysterious Spectre. Cocktails were also being promoted. This pub proved to me that there is life to the Gospel Oak area beyond the Southampton Arms. I really must get out more!

L shaped interior with an outdoor area to the rear. 4 real ales and numerous keg served.

First time to visit this pub for me and I liked this pub a lot and was suitably impressed. The main bar room with its studded yellow banquettes around the perimeter and classic and conventional tables, chairs and stools throughout is well described by the reviewer below. Then hidden out back is quite a spacious, and a bit colourful outside patio drinking area with separate areas including a couple canopied booth seating areas. Yes there is clearly a focus on food and as becoming of modern London pub interior makeovers the kitchen is exposed behind glass at one end of the pub. Sunday roasts were prominently advertised but then the rest of the food menu seemed to be Mexican with some sort of tie up with an award winning street food vendor. But it is an independently run establishment and the key selling point for me was more the 4 cask ale pumps and the 18 keg beer lines and the chalk beer board at the other end of the pub which detailed what was on them. For my visit three ales were available in the shape of the New River Brewery Isle or Rye, Gorgeous Brewery Goofyhoop and Tiny Rebel Stay Puft, a very good Porter. And the Keg lines included three craft brews from Tiny Rebel and further offerings from Siren, ABC, Camden Town and Belleville. Live music was advertised for Friday evenings and it was very good to see the showing of the current Women’s world cup so prominently promoted as we would all agree this is an increasingly important demographic to attract into the modern pub. The projection TV (the very sensible option to permanent big screens) was not in use for my visit and I also did not particularly notice the CCTV camera screen behind the bar. But if I had had done I would have taken comfort in the fact that this is a pub management that clearly takes the safety and security of its customers and their possessions seriously. Apart from my pint of stout being at slightly exorbitant Hampstead level prices , I didn’t find a lot not to like here.

July 5th 2015: I've often passed this pub throughout my life - I remember it well as The Gypsy [sic] Queen in the 1970s - and usually on the opposite side of the road. This was always a rather rough and scummy pub with unsavoury characters hanging around the door as described by Steve C below. Around 1990 the somewhat bizarre decision was made to take this pub still further down market by giving it an Oirish theme, calling it The Westport Inn and bedecking the fascia with green shamrocks. A quarter century later and common sense prevailed with the pub being given a more upmarket rebranding as The Bluebell. Due to tragic circumstances, this wasn't to last and it closed a few months later. The pub's potential however, had been revealed and it reopened under its original name in late June 2015 under the stewardship of the team team behind the very decent Grafton half a mile down the road. The website shows just how much work has been done to the place since its Bluebell incarnation, so one can only shudder to think what it must have been like as The Westport Inn - twinned with Hannibal Lecter's dungeon perhaps? The pub has a rear staple-shaped bar with original bar back and clock in the parapet as well as a small metal gantry and features a tiled apron which resembles a piece of Bridget Riley's Op Art. The floor is bare boarded with the use of reclaimed and varnished Victorian boards - they look very good indeed and will only improve with age. There are taupe buckskin banquettes to the perimeter whilst furniture is classic and conventional; the right wall is bare brick and as part of the renovation now has two reclaimed Victorian tiled fireplaces. On the table there are wang peonies and tea lights in glass holders. Lighting comes from shallow tin-shaded lights with filament bulbs suspended from the ceiling. Overall the interior is surprisingly airy. Somewhat ominously, there's a large projector TV though it was showing the Hampton Court Flower Show with the sound off. Nevertheless, it wasn't at all attractive, especially given the effort piled into the rest of the pub and gave the place a bit of a naff Wetherspoon's feel; the stereo played, though noise levels were muted. The crowd in here is generally young(ish) and quite hip though I did spot a handful of what I took to be old school locals, bemused at the display of interior cleanliness and the sight of people with teeth that didn't resemble Stonehenge. Out back there's a landscaped beer garden. The lavatories are good. Beverages? A large array of craft offerings and premium lagers - this is also a bottle shop. Several pumps were present but only one was serving - it's early days so perhaps the other pumps will be brought on line in the near future. My pint of Ubu's Purity cost £4.10 which is very hefty indeed given the area and it was warm and a bit flat; service was friendly and efficient. Overall I liked this pub a lot, though it has taken decades for me to be tempted in. I am concerned though that the projector will be used for live sport - this is no longer the type of pub that is going to attract the sports TV viewer and if management is tempted to go down this route, I fear they may well lose their newly acquired fashionable and affluent client base. To this end, I'm deducting 3 points for the TV - the pub gets them back when the awful projector is consigned to a skip. Otherwise it's certainly worth a visit and indeed I'd go so far as to say it's worth a detour. Update 23rd August 2018: A repeat visit the other night and I was served a good pint of East London Brewing Company's Jamboree which was still an expensive £4.10, a price I wouldn't expect to pay in either Hampstead or Notting Hill, so why so high here? Three points reinstated due to the raised projector screen but I wasn't impressed with the site of a TV screen behind the bar displaying a 16-image montage of all the pub's CCTV cameras; is this a pub or a supermax prison? I also wasn't impressed with the gaggle of chavvy young women swearing and shouting at each other from the bar to the pavement - couldn't they drink in the nice beer garden provided? So then, three points taken back due to Big Brother watching me and the loud mouthed girls. Update: Paid £3.00 for a half of Purity's Mad Goose the other, day which is obscene.