please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
Whilst I'd been to the nearby Red Cow several years back, I'd not previously been aware of this Fullers gastropub up a back street. It certainly attracts a middle-upper class clientele, which is reflected in the prices. Fullers London Pride & Olivers Island & Gales Seafarers & Spring Sprinter were the ales. With all tables inside taken by diners, I retreated to the paved garden at the rear, where it was very pleasant in the sun. But it was soon taken over by Richmond's finest, complete with their young charges. Not somewhere I'd rush back to. But it's clearly got a captive market.
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After trying unsuccessfully to get a drink in the Red Cow while the Rugby was on, I headed to this Fullers pub just off Sheen Road....the first thing I notice is Food and Kids!
Almost every table was taken by families with loads of kids...to be honest most seemed well behaved but it was gone 6pm on a Saturday, some of the kids were young and it was very noisy. Good smelling food was being served but I was only in here for a quick beer.
4 beers on hand pump...Butcombe Bitter, Fuller's Seafarers, London Pride and Bengal Lancer.
As mentioned about it was very noisy and we definitely more a pub come restaurant than just a pub. Interesting decoration with a Rhino lamp in one corner.
Nice enough place but not my thing when there's so many kids in a pub.
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Large rather soulless gastropub in typical battleship grey with largish garden. Didn't try the food but the beer (Fullers) was fine. Visit marred by the fact that staff did their best to get rid of customers by 10.50pm. Why do this?
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Initially put off by the huge bar but with no seating around it and seemed to be more of a restaurant however after a lovely evening changed my view to say well run pub, good beer and nice clientele. Didn't try the food but looked very good and will be back to try it.
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was poisoned by the food the first time I came here - glad to say second visit recently was much much better, Food was good and beer as well - full of young trendy things with dogs and beards, but apart from that, seemed a good pub now
TheGP - 25 Sep 2010 11:45 |
Cask: London Pride (Fuller's), Seafarers Ale (Gales/Fuller's), Butcombe Bitter.
Keg: Honey Dew (Fuller's), Aspalls Cider.
Bottles: Fridge full of interesting Belgian/German beers.
Less of a chain-pub feel than most of Richmond. Food-focused at weekends, excellent standard. Friendly, excellent for laid-back midweek beers.
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I think this place has picked up and got back to somewhere near its best. Good food, friendly staff and nice beer. Have to avoid during weekend days for the number of buggies but evenings a good fun and staff friendly
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This place was pleasant enough but far too hot once it was full on a sunny afternoon. Full, I might add, of a thirtysomething crowd with babies and toddlers in tow. This place is definitely family-friendly, and needs a pram park outside the front door. Bar service good, food service a bit haphazard.
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Nice enough place and on first examination of the menu impressions are good. Delivery though is average at very best. Shame as the ingredients are all there for the pub to be a great place away from the normal Richmond chain pub. Needs prices lowered or the cuisine to be improved substantially before it can claim to move to gastropub status.
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Well well well, finally this place seems to have sorted itself out. A real pub with really good food, service is great and welcoming. I had a great few pints of Pride when I was here with my family and the Sunday lunch is one of the best I've had.
It does good food, and yes it does seem to have been pulled into the gastro bracket, but I don't think this is a bad thing. I'd go here just for a drink and wouldn't feel pressured into eating (unlike some of my previous experiences here)
This pub has been missing for a few years, good to have the White Horse back!
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This is a difficult one. I've been here twice and have enjoyed myself both times. The place is inoffensive, has a decent selection of drinks and is comfortable enough.
However for somewhere that obviously labels itself as a gastro pub, I think it falls short, not much on the menu, and what there is just isn't great. I mean it isn't terrible it's just average, considering the prices it's disapointing.
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Finished another glorious evening in Richmond, with another visit to my favourite pub in the area.
It has just under gone a refurbishment, interior and mainly exterior, which has resulted in this gastro pub being very brighter & sharper than before.
Some of the comfy sofa's have gone and in its place have come some padded high-back benches, which create more eating space.
This pub still creates a warm, welcoming feeling and excels with food and provides a relaxing atmosphere for boozing.
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By the way, check out mpw246pf's review of the Marlborough as well - clearly they fancy themselves as a pub restaurant critic ala Michelin star inspector, rather than the awkward bugger impossible to please customer that they are..
TheGP - 25 Aug 2008 20:08 |
I ate in here and was on the toilet for a day afterwards.. Wige also ill. Avoid.
TheGP - 25 Aug 2008 20:07 |
Really liked the setting; the wooden floors weren't a problem, at least not on a relatively quiet Saturday evening - maybe that speaks volumes, even though it's summer holiday season. (8+/10)
Menu was adventurous (e.g. wild mushroom and truffle ice-cream starter, a la Heston, and Bison main course), unfortunately the food didn't deliver.
Service: wow, what a contrast. One really excellent waitress, but the other staff were from planet zog ...on a bad day... well meaning but unfortunately totally clueless.
As for the beers... Leffe in a pint glass, missed the nice round Leffe vessel - why!?!
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I love this Pub, easy to relax and enjoy a few drinks or a lovely dinner. 10/10 Recommendation for this Pub, staff are friendly and you always get a smile and good service. Don't agree with theoneandonlyjoe's comments, never had a problem with big groups and outside furniture.
tmp11 - 22 Jun 2008 22:35 |
I'm not a huge fan of gastropubs (for a young guy I'm a bit of a traditionalist if you want to eat a good meal go to a restaurant a pubs for drinking) but this place does it very well. The food is good and the beer is nice. In general the staff are really friendly however I and a very large group of friends were in there one summer and so moved some of the tables and chairs in the garden around so we could sit together. One of the staff came out and demanded we move them back as not asking permission 'wasn't cricket' and that he probably would have let us if we'd asked first. This seemed bizarre to me as we weren't doing any harm or blocking anything in the garden and if it was ok to do something like that but you just needed to ask permission first then perhaps a calm, slight rebuke would have been better than an angry and condescending snap. They also lost themselves quite a bit of money as there were over twenty of us and were about to order food but decided to go somewhere else after that.
Having said that it was just a one off and when we've been in with smaller groups they seemed very friendly. Maybe they have a thing against big groups?
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I found this a great place to eat. It has that gastroub relaxed feel with good quality food. Recommend.
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Visited late yesterday evening - seemed to have more of a pubby feel because they had stopped serving food for the evening
2 guest beers on - Adnams and Rev James. The friendly barman voluntarily gave me a sample of the latter. Told me they had London Porter on last week.
If only they could do something about the noise - as other people have commented, the wooden floors dont help - I could consider coming more frequently
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A great gatsro pub deserving of recent publicity, great food served by knowlegable and helpful staff. Beers and dinks of good quality with interesting wines. Perfect place on a quiet saturday afternoon to relax
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Hot landlady !!
anonymous - 18 Jul 2007 22:27 |
Agree with KatrinaD, although the garden is lovely if it's a sunny day. Buy some carpets and it would be lovely.
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For me too clinical, overated and trys a bit too hard - can never feel relaxed in the place with all that wood and high ceiling noise. Sorry
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'JB' this is a place for eaters...!
Behold, the 'White Horse' gets a mention this week in The Times "Gastro Pubs 2007" ! You can get a 2-course gastro lunch here (Mon,Tues,Wed) for �15.00. Or an evening gastro meal on the same first three days of the week. What do we do for the rest of the week..? Have to pop down the hill to the 'Orange Horse' by the station, for a nose-bag..!! Hey, hay! TJ
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Great pub for food, great sunday roast, nice chilled out atmos, not too many kids. recommend.
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I have heard good reports about the White Horse, in Richmond, recently. Apparently the food IS good!
I'll try it, and let you know soon..!
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The White Horse, if you don't know it, is right behind the Red Cow, on the main road out of Richmond going towards Sheen/Putney. (Its not far from the Black Horse (now closed) and nowhere near the Grey Horse which I quite like in Sunbury, or the Spotted Horse in Putney High Street! But no doubt, they may be related)!! TJ
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Fullers "Pub and Eating House" , now much more eating house than pub. Basically its an upmarket gastro pub. The absence of any soft furnishings - there's wooden floors and chairs throughout - mean that it's inevitably very noisy and, whilst accepting that I'm not a gastropub person, I dont think I would want to eat with so much background noise always
Nice outside seating area - but this is not a place for drinkers
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Good food, nice and gentrified, great Fullers beers. Outrageously expensive but would be completely different if it was cheap. Nice because next door is The Red Cow which is the complete opposite.
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Padlock to kids playground removed :-)
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Thought I would bring a few friends here for lunch in the Summer - it ruined everybody's Sunday! Ordered food, waited 25 mins and got a starter. Waited another 45 mins for NO main course (funny how the table that came in after us had all been served). We were assured that the food would arrive in the next 10 mins. 15 mins later and still no food. 20 mins later and still no food. No apology either. Said that we were going to leave and then the food arrived. It was stone cold! We all left (I was pretty embarassed, the others were just starving). Can't believe we only got a half-hearted 'sorry', they made us pay for the drinks we'd had to buy because of the long wait and still didn't get an explanation. I'm hoping they'd just had a bad day and I want to come back and be pleasantly suprised. Just really unacceptable service and bad management on that occasion though. It can really put you off.
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This is one of my locals. In my opinion the quality of food has gone down. They used to have a different menu every day. Now it is a standard menu. I haven't eaten in there for over a year.
They never seem to have ESB on tap. The atmosphere is generally fairly smokey and noisy due to the lack of soft furnishings.
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A great place to go for great pub grub and drinks. Only downside is that the place can be over run by children which spoils things, especially if you want to have a lazy afternoon drink.
Cat_a - 29 Apr 2005 16:28 |
They've removed signs prohibiting little persons (good) but the door to the playground is still locked (bad): a shame, since this pub is strategically placed as you can supervise your offpring on the next door playground while having a pint and a bite.
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Have Fullers got this pub back again, does anyone know ? The pub has the Griffin sign outside again and only serves Fullers beers, but there is no mention of this pub on the Fullers Website
It has that rather impersonal feel that many Richmond pubs have, but the beer has been quite good on my recent visits and the service is better than average
Is this a pub that does food, or a restaurant with a drinks licence ? - not sure that it knows what its customer base is.
Food seems pricey for what is basically a pub environment and it seems quite smokey, because of the low ceilings.
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A Shame but gone downhill in my opinion, used to be a fave of mine but now not a patch on the White Swan for food or other pubs up the hill
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Used to be great but not accepting kids anymore -why a discriminate? Are people like "Si" (below) so old they don't remember being children?
Otherwise good foreign beers on draft, good food.
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Nice pub, slightly on the expensive side, and ideal in the summer for watching the ladies walk by in the large beer garden (with its own bar). The upstairs is nice and breezy and downstairs is traditional and homely. Let's hope it isn't gutted anytime soon in an attempt to attract the younger drinker. Suited more to a drink during the daytime in my mind, but hey, that's just me! Food is good, if not outstanding, but a little on the dear side considering it's on a hot plate.
Mr Tall - 8 Nov 2004 00:08 |
Overpriced big style, and the beer is not great- lot better pubs in town (food is quite good though)!
Tom - 15 Feb 2004 23:12 |
have been here regularly on thursdays - good for catching uo with old mates room to drink, decent beer and attractive barmaids.
BurnleyWLS - 24 Dec 2003 13:12 |
Si is spot on. Can be okay on a Friday evening although you get the impression they are more interested in the people buying food rather than just sat there drinking.
Good for: food
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All the makings of a gastropub, for better or worse... Beware screaming Surrey offspring at the weekend though.
Si - 13 Aug 2003 14:35 |
