The Red Lion, Welwyn

The Red Lion, just outside Old Welwyn on the B197 advertises itself as a “Country Pub & Eating House”, which usually means a traditional pub given an expensive makeover and turned into a bland gastro restaurant, and that is almost the case with the Red Lion. It certainly was given the expensive makeover, and reopened in December 2009 in its current guise after £500K was spent on it. And it certainly has the standard sterile gastro pub décor. And although over half the pub is run as a silver service restaurant section, fortunately it still retains a separate bar area. And has the benefit of a very pleasant garden area out back which is accessible from the bar. Apparently parts of the building date back to the 1800’s although you’d be hard pushed to recognise any in the public areas of the Red Lion. Although to be fair most of the original character had been progressively removed by previous pubco’s who had struggled to make a go of it under previous chain pub guises. The internal décor is the usual gastro pub interior design set up of wooden and stone floors throughout, large central exposed brick fireplace accessible from both sides, plain walls in pastel colours, designer spot lighting, sofas in the bar area and wicker furniture in the restaurant. The restaurant room is wood cladded and painted white and presumably to try and give it a bit of character, there is a dead animal theme going on with Stags antlers on the fireplace and assorted animal skins on the floor and on the long seats. Seemed a bit naff to me, but then I am no expert to what passes as creative interior design nowadays. We didn’t eat here, but one look at the menu was enough to confirm the usual pretentious gastro nonsense, where chips are referred to as frites, and a classic burger will set you back the wrong side of £11.00. Like most modern pub restaurant places it does have a decent wine and drinks selection and the bar does support three real ale handpumps. These were dispensing Doombar, London Pride and Brakspears Gold and the Doombar and Gold we tried were well kept pints. But wet sales are clearly secondary to the food here and despite several branded staff in black pub polo’s, only one was working the bar area, so expect to wait if you get stuck behind a big group like I did. So, in conclusion, a standard Gastro pub restaurant similar in décor and ambience to nearly every other gastro pub you will have been in. Can’t comment on the food, but the beers were OK and the outside garden is good for a fine weather day.

Official site of the Red Lion, contains menus and wine list - www.theredlionwelwyn.co.uk