The Westbury, N22

Pub SignMan left this review about The Westbury

This is quite a typical North London, gentrified pub located about a five-minute walk from Turnpike Lane station. It’s a fairly small, single room pub with notional drinkers’ and diners’ spaces to the front and rear respectively. The whole pub is bare boarded, with large windows along the front and left sides allowing plenty of natural light into the room. Comfy padded banquettes run under the windows along the left-hand wall, whilst high tables and stools fill the front part of the pub and basic tables and chairs occupy the larger rear dining space. The walls are mostly painted in bland shades and there's only one small section of wood panelling in the rear right corner. The servery occupies most of the right-hand wall and has a chunky dark wood counter broken by a large central pillar, and a pleasant bare brick bar back decorated with lots of pump clips and plenty of blackboards detailing draught and cocktail options plus a few upcoming events. Goldfish bowls have been positioned at either end of the bar counter, but they’ve been repurposed as plant pots. A few uninspiring modern art prints are dotted around the room, whilst the rear wall is dominated by an open kitchen, and a quick check of the menu on my table showed that mains clock in at around the £14 mark. Music was playing so quietly as to be impossible to hear at times, despite the pub being quite quiet on a Thursday evening.
The pub has made it into recent editions of the Good Beer Guide and accordingly, there were four cask ales on handpull - Stewart Jack Back, Hobsons Old Prickly, Five Points Pale and St Austell Tribute, although this still meant that five pumps remained unclipped. Keg options were less interesting and included the usual mega-craft stuff from Beavertown and Brixton. The Jack Back was a nice pint, and I enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere which made it very easy to settle down and would be conducive to a longer session.
This is quite a likeable pub which gets a lot of the basics right, but perhaps feels a little too stripped out and food-focussed to make it a destination in its own right. The main draw is probably the varied cask range, which should turn up an unusual beer or two and make it worth popping your head in when passing.

Date of visit - 10th October 2024

On 3^rd January 2025 - rating: 7
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