Monk, Canterbury

Housed in an old brewery, perhaps, but thoroughly modern inside. Part of the Abode Hotel (Michael Caines Taverns), and operating as a food-led pub during the day but a lively nightspot later on. Various seating areas around the bar, but the best place to sit - if the weather permits - is the part-covered decking beer garden to the rear. Four regular handpumps offering some local beers (including the 5% Hopdaemon Green Daemon Helles, £3.85, when I visited) plus a fancy new Hobgoblin pump.

This large pub and restaurant is part of the adjacent Abode Hotel and is run by a company fronted by Michelin starred chef Michael Caines. This may explain why the place was full of diners when we arrived early into a Saturday evening, prompting the doorman to suggest we come back a little later when the tables are cleared away and things get a bit livelier. He wasn't wrong either, as upon our return at around 22:00, the place was packed with extras from The Only Way is Essex and a fairly long queue had started to form outside. We eventually made it inside, despite some marvellous pedantry from one of the doorman who made one of our party return to the back of the queue, and found a large, opened out room with the servery along the back wall and a few large pillars breaking up the space. The room is bare boarded with fairly 'safe' décor as you might expect in a food led establishment like this. The customer base in the evenings is very young and I must have been shoved out of the way by bouncers running to break up fights/drug deals/terrorist cells on three or four occasions. To escape the madness we made our way out to the pleasant decked area at the rear of the pub, which I think had an outdoor bar. A new form of entertainment was devised out here, as it turns out that watching spray tanned girls getting their heels stuck in the decking is pretty good fun. I could see at least four handpulls on the bar, but I couldn't get near enough to figure out what any of them were. The keg range was quite eclectic and included a few beers from Kentish breweries. Unfortunately, this was another pub in which the best man decided to buy us all shorts, so I didn't get to give any of the beer a try. I expect people that visit this place in the daytime would barely recognise it from my description, so with that in mind I think I need to give it the benefit of the doubt somewhat. It doesn't change the fact that, despite all the tottering totty, I couldn't wait to get out of here. I think the rule of thumb with this place is to only give it a try if the door staff aren't already on duty.