The Three Chimneys, Ashford

Nowadays very much a dining pub, modernised as a business, but it remains just the sort 'olde worlde' country pub you would take a visiting American relative to for a meal or just a drink. Multiple small rooms with low ceilings and exposed timbers, B&W photographs, bits of brassware, draped hop bines, etc. Real ale still served on gravity too, with casks of Harvey's (mandatory in these parts, £4.20) and something from Adnams on stillages behind the counter. NB - If full of diners, and the weather is clement, there are also some patio tables out front.

Official site of The Three Chimneys - www.thethreechimneys.co.uk

Official site of The Three Chimneys - www.thethreechimneys.co.uk

Looking for somewhere for lunch on the way to Benenden this pub got the nod because it opens at 11.30 during the week. As intimated by previous reviewers, it’s most definitely food led. Most of the pub, including the large area to the right of the bar counter and the conservatory at the back, is furnished with tables laid for diners. The exception is the table with sofas bearing cushions as you enter, and the public bar on the left. This bar is very traditional with wooden benches and wooden tables and chairs, and a massive fireplace with a welcome fire ablaze on a cool November day. The whole pub still has the feel of a traditional country pub, despite the fact that most of it is used as a restaurant. The dried hops hanging around all over the place is a nice touch, and very appropriate for a Kent pub. It is always a worrying sight when on entering a pub there is not a single handpump to be seen. But having seen previous reviews I knew what to expect. There were three ales on stillage – Adnam’s Best (Bitter presumably), Adnam’s Topaz, and Goody Brewery Good Heavens. I had a couple of pints of the latter, which turned out to be a well kept and delicious mid-range (3.9% ABV) Kentish ale. But beware the cider if you’re driving – it’s a local 8% ABV offering. The food is not cheap – my companions both had smoked haddock at around £18 a throw, but my ploughmans was around £7. This isn’t the place to come if you’re after pub grub, but both the service and food quality were excellent. They were doing a very good trade with diners on a Monday lunchtime, and I would suspect that it might be necessary to book for the evening or weekends. I liked this country pub very much. The staff were friendly and welcoming, the food was of excellent quality and the beer I had was superb. The only downside for the drinker is that there aren’t many tables not set for diners inside, although there is plenty of outside seating. Possibly you can sit at the “diners” tables if only drinking – I didn’t have a need to test it. This is a good pub which I would be happy to visit again.

In brief, I was passing on a damp November evening, and fancied a beer. I walked into the deserted public bar, sat by the fire, and drank the most delicious beer I’d had all year. But there’s more: we live just down the road, but for various reasons not wholly connected with the pub, I hadn’t been in for about seven years. Prior to that, I’d been a fairly loyal customer since the 1970’s, when, under the aegis of Ted and Grace Carter, it was the iconic bread and cheese pub. Times pass, people move on, and the trade became food led: a restaurant was tacked onto the back, the two little bars were now side plates rather than the meal. Enough nostalgia, it is still an attractive country pub: ignore, if you will, the dining room and concentrate on the bars. A cosy and cluttered saloon and a more or less untouched public,still with dartboard interestingly placed next to the door. Low ceilings, open fire.Sitting back from the A262, at the junction of two country lanes, one can almost envisage the alehouse stranded in a field, frequented by the French prisoners immortalised in the pubsign. The field is still there,albeit tidied up and made user friendly;at the back is a nut platt cum beer garden. When I first used the pub, all beer was from Fremlins, of blessed memory, and served direct from the casks set on a stillage at the back of the bar,alongside a fine oak sideboard that housed the bread and cheese. I might be a bit hazy about the cheese, but the beer is still served in the time honoured way. Adnams seems to be the beer of the moment, alongside Franklins, a micro from Sussex. The beer that inspired this reverie :Adnams New Zealand Pale Ale. We haven’t eaten here.As Manky Badger noted, opening hours are "traditional".

This is somewhere I've driven past so many times and have intended to visit for so many years. I walked in to dismay – no hand pumps. And then I realised. The beer comes straight out of the barrel. Heaven! Three ales and a cider. We had lunch – the stilton ploughman's was very tasty. The beer garden is huge and we spent a pleasant two hours here. The only negative is the fact that they close on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm. What's that all about?