Thursday 3 March 2011

The Harp, Finally!

I have been remiss, I was meaning to do a write up of The Harp in Chandos Place. Now aside from the fact I've not really had the time, I'm really only writing this today to shut Professor Pie Tin up! Seriously though here it is.

This place is lovely, it's small, downstairs and upstairs. It really doesn't matter though it's got bags of charm and more to spare!
The staff are great, Binny and Sarah run a very tight ship and if you can't cut the mustard you won't be there very long. They see everybody that's waiting and they let you know you'll be served. It's a basic of customer service but I'm always blown away by how much it means when it actually happens. Just one of the reasons I think, why it got CAMRA's overall pub of the year.
The beers are all in top notch condition and there's both recognisable and the totally unknown on the nine hand pumps.
On this visit I chose to stick with the Dark Star, for me it does pale thirst-quenching beers very well and that's exactly what I was looking for yesterday, I'd been walking for hours and just wanted a place to sit down with a pint, so when we wandered into this bustling busy little boozer and saw a free table with a couple of chairs it was one of the most welcome sights I have ever seen.
We had one drink before Mrs Rabidbarfly had to go to a meeting. Having been on the Hophead I opted for another and went back to my seat. I had another couple of beers including the new Hophead Citra which whilst it was in good condition was not a patch on the original Hophead, there's a saying about not fixing unbroken things that springs to mind.
The bar was busy and the ambient noise was kind of soothing, it gave a feeling that all was right with the world, if you closed your eyes you could have been in one of those documentaries about pubs and life in the early part of the last century where there's added background noise with sepia pictures of people in suits and hats all smiling, holding pints and having a great time. You know that if those images and that busy murmur were to ever disappear you'd be losing part of your heritage and a tragedy would have occurred. I do wonder what took CAMRA so long to give a London venue pub of the year when there are lots of places like this around, any thoughts?

6 comments:

Rob Sterowski said...

Probably because London isn't actually the centre of the universe.

rabidbarfly said...

I never said it was Barm, I just think it's odd that the place with more pubs per square mile than anywhere else in the country(probably) hadn't got the award before.

Mark said...

Interesting you didn't think much of Hophead Citra. I'm eager to track that down and try it after missing the Amarillo.

Professor Pie-Tin said...

Glad you enjoyed the Harp - it's been one of my favourite Central London boozers for years which is why I was keen to hear what you thought of it.

There are tons of great boozers in that there London that don't get a look-in when the awards come round and frankly that's the way most of them prefer it.

We'll leave that to the " grim 'oop North " brigade.

rabidbarfly said...

PPT, after just two visits, it's fast become one of my favourite central London boozers.

Scott Murray said...

Maybe they are trying to take the lime light out off some of the bigger cities as they already have the best restaurants, shops etc.