The Red Lion, Newmarket

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Steve of N21 left this review about The Red Lion

The Red Lion is similar to a lot of the pubs in these village locations around Newmarket in that it functions more as a restaurant than a traditional village pub nowadays.
From the outside, a red brick building with flint stone end walls that is common with a lot of the architecture in this area of the Cambridge / Suffolk borders, it has been totally modernised inside by the current owners, who bought it from Green King back in 2009.
Internally most of the space is taken up by the dining room with its Oak floor and solid Oak furniture laid for dining and bright Farrow and Ball shades on the walls. The menu is definitely more upmarket than your usual pub food, with steaks coming in around the £20+ mark, and even standard menu options the wrong side of £14.00.
But the pub does retain a small bar with its stripped pine wood floors, bar stools and a few tables which again are generally set for food. And here again there is liberal use of Farrow & Ball bright colour pallet. However one positive point is that The Red Lion is now a Free House and there are three hand pumps on the bar which regularly dispense Sharps Doombar and Woodforde Wherry as regular beers and then a rotating guest for the third.
I’ve only ever popped in here for a beer, which has always been fine, but have never eaten here so cannot comment on that. And as the local CAMRA site comments, this is one of those places that if you do pop in just for a beer you can expect to be asked "are you dining with us tonight?", which clearly shows where the focus is.

On 30^th October 2013 - rating: 6
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