The Crown, Maidenhead

A dining pub with rooms, there are three pulls with a house beer plus London Pride and Youngs Bitter in very reasonable nick. Furnished with various tables & chairs including a side snug which appears used for cutlery sorting. There's also a garden and front patio.

Another Cookham pub/restaurant with a winning location, this one overlooking a field and indeed some horses were tethered up during our stay. Staple-shaped inside with a modern interior that lacked a bit of homeliness. Selection daily papers spotted. As with most Cookham outlets, this one is big on food but you’re ok to just drink though seating options are a bit limited. Perhaps unusually, it’s dog friendly. At the bar: Pride, Youngs Bitter, Deuchars IPA (excellent nick, best Deuchars I’ve had for years). Slight dampener was the cloth-eared barmaid who not only pulled pints when asked for halves but then proceeded to ring it through wrong at the till. So some improvement from the review below, I’d be willing to try it again.

The Crown is a former traditional pub in the very expensive Buckinghamshire Village of Cookham, home to several of the ‘rich and famous’. A couple of years ago it underwent a complete makeover and moved more to being a gastro restaurant. Décor is the usual gastro make over stuff of wooden floors, large wooden tables, some exposed brickwork on fireplaces and liberal use of Farrow and Ball pastel colours everywhere else, you get the idea.. We used to use the Crown a lot years back when I used to work on the Lower Cookham Road and have used it on a few occasions after the makeover for a pint, due to its close proximity to the Moor Hall Marketing Institute opposite. But, like a lot of these gastro restaurants in pub skins, it seems to be always understaffed and as they do not separate wet from dry sales you finish up queuing behind people ordering food and then dealing with frazzled inexperienced staff when you do finally make the bar. And despite having three hand pumps on the bar, I’ve only ever experienced one dispensing ale in the form of London Pride. I hadn’t been in since early last year out of principle when it came to light that the pub manager, one Matt Smith below, has a policy of not allowing entry to builders and people in work clothes and it was widely reported in the local press that two farm workers had been refused service due to wearing branded tops. But decided to give it another chance a couple of weeks ago when having colleagues staying in Moor Hall. But the service issues and poor choice still remain and it wasn’t long before moving off to one of the more drinker friendly pubs with experienced bar staff which fortunately can still be found in the village and the nearby Cookham Dean

Welcome to the Crown At Cookham. We are an independantly owned pub in the beautiful village of Cookham in Berkshire. Our menu is locally sourced and freshly prepaired. Why not pop in for breakfast served from 8pm daily and enjoy our free Wi Fi internet access, or just sit by the open fire and enjoy all The Crown has to offer!!!

Official site of the Crown in Cookham, contains menus - www.thecrowncookham.com