Eating Out in SE19 – Westow House Pub

Crystal Palace, Baby!

Westow House in Crystal Palace is the living embodiment of everything a pub should be. Like the glory days of the village tavern where crusty hobbits would gather for flagons of ale as it was the only building around with a roaring fire on heathenous medieval nights, Westow House is a pub for actually living in, as they were meant to be. An ale-filled extension of your home.

The Hare and Hounds, Lingfield, Surrey

The Hare & Hounds, Lingfield, is a charming, powder blue pub, sitting unassumingly along the slip road outside the quaint, Midsommer Murders-esque village of Lingfield, famed for its racecourse. Inside is a colourful explosion of mismatched furniture, oriental flourishes and borderline kitsch-tacky details which somehow coalesce to produce something like the sitting room of my dreams -all of this arranged neatly around a large log fire.

Malmaison London. Shaken, not stirred.

Jumping up and down permitted

There’s something a bit odd about staying in a hotel in your own city. It’s also quite pimpy, so the best thing to do when given the opportunity, as I recently was to the London Malmaison, is take someone you fancy the pants off (rather than your mum), raid the mini-bar, drink too many cocktails and really good wine at dinner then spend most of the night dancing ’til you pass out in bed to the dulcet tones of One Direction on the randomly picked turn-down service TV station.