The Royal, St Leonards-On-Sea Town, St. Leonards-On-Sea

Please Note: This review is over a year old.

Steve C left this review about The Royal Hotel

After a relatively short Autumn refurbishment the Royal, as it is now known, reopened its doors to the public. Gone are the feckless staff who couldn’t run a bath and the chain smoking down-and-outs that used to gather in the doorways have been moved on. The new upmarket Londonesque interior and polite welcome act as an oasis in the shithole that is St Leonards Warrior Square.
The long bar is stocked with Fosters alongside a premium keg range. During a recent Tuesday evening visit, one of the three hand pumps was off leaving Theakston’s Lightfoot and Old Peculiar as the cask ale options. A pub classic food menu with a Mediterranean theme is available. I noted that the burgers were priced around the £9 - £10 mark and a children’s menu was available. This pub opens at midday and closes at 22:00 Monday – Thursday, 23:00 Fridays and Saturdays and 21:00 on Sundays. Kitchen opening times are available in the pub’s website.
There are no televisions here so no live sport. There was some low background music playing during my visit and the website advertises live music, although I don’t think it is a regular thing. This pub is far superior to its last incarnation and as such I have upped its rating from a three to a seven.


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26th July 2011

The Royal Hotel is just across the road from Warrior Square Railway Station and is in fact now the closest pub to it. To be honest the exterior does nothing to entice the passing commuters and during my visits at 13:00 and 22:00 on Saturday there were only a handful of locals each time. To be fair the interior is better than the exterior suggests and at some point the pub has been knocked through as the left hand side of this U-shaped pub is designated the Victoria Bar. This area now houses a pool table whilst the rest of the pub is set up with standard tables and chairs. During my lunchtime visit there was a man asleep at one of the tables and this pretty much summed up the atmosphere. I didn’t see any food advertised, but the café opposite was very busy so maybe a trick is being missed on the dry sales front. The bar does support three hand pumps, but two of these were unused leaving Theakston Lightfoot as the only ale choice alongside the usual generic draught and Amstel. I purchased a Guinness from the friendly woman behind the bar and ended up leaving it as it was undrinkable. When I revisited later in the night I plumped for the pubs speciality of Fosters which thankfully didn’t make me ill. The toilets are located downstairs, but there is a disabled toilet at street level.
One gets the feeling that the Royal has been in decline for some time so hopefully someone will take up the lease that is available and inject some much-needed money and enthusiasm into this pub.

On 16^th January 2018 - rating: 7
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