The Harrow Inn, Sutton

This is a large roadside pub which I assume is an old coaching inn, located on a prominent junction in the centre of Cheam. The pub certainly looks the part on approach, thanks to the classic Brewer’s Tudor facade, but as soon as you step through the front door, you’re greeted by nothing but disappointment thanks to an ugly modern refit straight out of the Beefeater/Harvester/Toby Carvery handbook. A multiple room layout has been smashed through to create one very large open-plan room with bare boards throughout and the servery midway down the left-hand wall. A couple of seating areas to the front offer a mix of tables and chairs and bar stools around high tables and ledges. The bar has a nice tile floored area around it, under a modern counter with distressed wood panel frontage. The bar back is all mirrors and white tiles, splashed with neon signs and a few modern decorative bits of tat. Down the right, another seating area emerges, offering two ros of tables and chairs running towards an end window bay, plus a row of banquette booths, each with their own TV screen inside. Further back is a rather dark dining area with more regular tables and chairs, plus a few tub chairs around a window that looks out towards the car park. Decor is all fairly standard stuff, including some old photos and paintings, bright murals on a couple of the walls and endless TV screens, all showing a live Premier League match. The almost total lack of soft furnishings meant that the pub was extremely loud, despite being some way from feeling full. There’s also a garden to the rear, which I didn’t explore, although I did notice some of those beach hut-style seating areas that you see in pubs like this. I wasn’t expecting anything interesting on the bar, so was a little surprised to see Dorking DB One line up next to the ubiquitous Sharps Doom Bar. Two other pumps had ‘Coming Soon’ tags and one pump was being used to hold a notice explaining that the DB One had been pouring hazy, so customers might wish to use discretion before ordering, which I thought was a nice touch. I threw caution to the wind and ordered the DB One regardless, which a cheerless barmaid slopped into a glass for me. It was marginally hazy at best, and tasted pretty good, so fair play all round to whoever keeps their cellar. I think the beer was probably the only thing I really enjoyed about this visit, which was generally a bit of a let down, thanks to the drab interior design, cookie-cutter décor and miserable service. Cheam has a couple of decent pubs that I enjoy visiting, hence never making it to this place before, and I don’t see me adding this to that particular list.

Official site of The Harrow Inn - www.craft-pubs.co.uk

Official site of The Harrow Inn - www.craft-pubs.co.uk

I guess once this was the best in town, the place for rotary lunches and masonic dinners. It still looks well from the outside but once through the door is much as M&B left it after their final, doomed refurbishment into a mid-market Ember Inn. Along with most of their pubs in the region they offloaded it to Stonegate and it's now one of their downmarket Traditional Inns brand, similar to a Harvester or Hungry Horse. I guess they wanted to avoid taking the Red Lion's custom. Otherwise much as described by Rex, including beer range seeming unchanged since M&B days. I would choose any of the other pubs in the village before this one.

Randomness Guide to London - Harrow Inn entry

Randomness Guide to London - Harrow Inn entry

This is an Ember Inns pub, so it is almost as much of a restaurant as a pub, although a good few notches up on a Harvester. It looks fairly attractive from the outside with its mock Tudor frontage, but inside there’s no pretence of antiquity. The furnishings are a mixed bag, with perhaps too many sofas and armchairs for my liking, but that’s just my subjective opinion. The wall décor consists almost entirely of numerous arty prints and suchlike, and there are plenty of spotlit vases on the shelves and in the alcoves between the drinking areas, plus one-armed bandits and games machines in various nooks and crannies. In the main bar area there is also an open plan coal effect gas fire. They had four ales on, but all from the ranks of the usual suspects – London Pride; GKIPA; Adnam’s Broadside; and Young’s Bitter. But I have to say that the Broadside tasted OK, and at a reasonable price of £2.85 a pint. But the selection is not quite as good as the previous Ember Inn I had been in (North Star at Hook), which had a couple of guests from lesser known breweries. In essence this is a characterless place just like so many in our high streets these days, but they are definitely doing something right to appeal to so many people as it was busy at 14.10 on a Friday afternoon, whereas the nearest real pub (The Railway) only had a handful of punters in. I guess they must come for the nosh, because although I didn’t eat there, my previous experience with Ember Inns suggests that their grub is better than most pubcos’ fare. Either that, or I have to come to the conclusion that most people like spending their time in hotel lounges.