The Cross Keys

The Cross Keys - Fuller's Pub and Restaurant in Hammersmith

The Cross Keys

It’s a mark of premium quality that you can rely on – and it’s not a title that's given away lightly.

To earn the honour, pubs must score 95% or more in consecutive assessments, with marks easily lost for even the slightest smear on a pint glass.

The Cross Keys review: A busy Covent Garden pub with a local ...

If you’re after a busy Covent Garden boozer with the feel of a local village pub, then this Endell Street drinking haunt is the place for you.

As well as offering all the usual lagers you’d find in your standard boozer, the pub has five or six real-ale taps set back into the bar, making this an intriguing option for discerning beer fans in the capital.

The Cross Keys, Thame, Oxon, pub review: from dodgy boozer to ...

Nowadays, it’s the temptations of the bar that draws them over the threshold – to say nothing of the welcoming atmosphere of a place that has become the focus of its community.

Indeed, it’s listed as an Asset of Community Value.

Landlord Peter Lambert became so involved with local organisations he became the town’s mayor a few years after taking over the Cross Keys.

The bar is carpeted and traditional.

Along with an abundance of seating, this gives the large, single room more of the feeling of a cluster of cosy alcoves, in which locals are likely to be found playing cribbage or dominoes.

The Cross Keys Chelsea - seasonal menu, pub classics, real ales

Renowned for our celebrated history and famous patrons, here at The Cross Keys we offer a warm and laid-back place to drink and dine.

From innovative, seasonal dishes to pub classics and Sunday roasts served with a choice of real ales, wines or cocktails, The Cross Keys offers the perfect British pub experience.

Come by to sample the menu or just enjoy some bar snacks and a pint at Chelsea’s iconic local pub.

The Cross Keys, London SW3 – restaurant review | Marina O'Loughlin

Then I clock comments under a piece I wrote on cult internet dishes – dishes designed to appeal to the new, social-meeja-savvy breed of restaurant-goer – and see howl after howl of disenfranchised pain from people who appear to find the 21st century food fan as evil a construct as a banker pal of Pol Pot’s.

With the exception of the meal’s bookends – good, airy focaccia-style bread and desserts (a fashionable chocolate bar, all ganache and crisp and peanuts, and idiot-proof lemon syllabub) – there isn’t anything that’s wholly successful.

There’s an OK lamb rump dish, padded out with quantities of hummus spiked with preserved lemon, broad beans and roast sweet potatoes, as though someone’s sneakily added meat to something from a vegan collective in Hove.

And it turns out that the Cross Keys has quite a lot of story: patronised over the years by everyone from Agatha Christie to the Rolling Stones, it’s one of Chelsea’s oldest pubs.

On the strength of our meal, I have a strong suspicion that I would have enjoyed that a whole lot more.