The Honor Oak – a Forest Hill Favourite:
I changed job earlier this year, but still miss my old colleagues, so when the opportunity to review the Honor Oak came up, I was delighted to accept as one colleague lives in the road opposite and we could have a good catch-up on the news and gossip!
Opening a pub seems to be a very risky business these days. I believe that pubs in England have been closing at a phenonemal rate in recent years, and so to make this thrive as a business you have to do more than ever has been done before. My friend told me that she’d been to the pub under its previous ownership, and that it could be a bit of a hit and miss experience. So we were both interested to see what the new owners had done.
The outside of the front of the pub is a smoking space, but we were both (as asthmatic non smokers) delighted to see that the rear garden space was completely non-smoking. Even if outdoors, I don’t like having smoke come my way. The rear garden also contained an enclosed playground suitable for the under 5s.
We were shown around some upstairs rooms available for private hire; but also the space where a monthly whisky tasting is held in the Whisky Room (where else!), where yoga classes are planned, and mother and baby groups. This seemed to me to be a great way to put a pub back into the heart of the community. Make it somewhere for social activities that people can come to regardless of the venue being a pub.
Whilst we ate in the restaurant, we were shown the morning menu including a fabulous brunch, and the bar menu. The pub welcomes families, and certainly appeals to young mothers wanting to meet their friends in a relaxed environment. Children are welcome until early evening.
The menu consists of 7 choices of starter and main, plus a selection of steaks. The menu is seasonal, so will change. We started with Cornish Crab cake for me, and Chilli and Garlic Tiger prawns for my colleague. Both were perfectly cooked and prettily presented.
I then had butter roasted monkfish, scallop and sundried tomato mousse, parma ham, olive potato with sauteed spinach. It was a very substantial plate of food, and I have to admit being defeated by the quantity of potato! The spinach was cooked to perfection, a far cry from the overcooked stuff of my youth.
My friend opted for a pan roast fillet of salmon with crushed Jersey Royals and a cherry tomato salad. This too was declared delicious.
I was too full for dessert, but was kindly given a spoon by the waitress! This was a perfect summer treat, semi-freddo and pureed strawberries.
The next time that I meet up with my ex-colleague, we are going here again for sure. The food was lovely, the staff really friendly and helpful, and team players (the young waitress tripped on a step and dropped a plate of food. I heard her apologise to the the chef as it was part of a large order, and he said, “There’s nothing to apologise for, are you ok?”.).
I really hope that this pub will be successful, it certainly deserves to be.
The Honor Oak
1 Saint German’s Road, London SE23 1RH
020 8690 9222
We ate here at the invitation of the pub. All views and content belong to London Unattached.
What a great pub!! The food looks so much better than pub food here. I would love to go there .. the dishes looked so gorgeous!
The pictures of the food that you have posted are very old even though they are only from 2 years ago. In the last 12 months the ownership of this pub has changed hands 3 times and 4 to 5 times since 2014. The food and experience is far far different than it was years ago, here is my real latest review.
The Honor Oak Pub
I ate here a few days ago and I have to say that it was a horrible experience. I have eaten there one time before a few months ago but only ordered the onion rings which were very good.
I only ordered them because it said “house-made” on their menu and they were proper good-battered fat onion rings. So I was looking forward to getting them again but sadly they were no longer on the menu. Shame as it would have been the only good thing left on the menu now.
So my new approach to a new restaurant is to order 2 appetizers and see if they can cook those well, and if they do, then I order something more. Sadly I did not adhere to this vital principal and paid that frustration in a 3rd dish which I immediately regretted. I ordered the calamari and beef brisket taco starters. I figured that a chef can’t mess up something like that right?
So the calamari rings were cut way too thin, almost like strings and they gave less than only 10 rings, yes I counted! It was an extremely small portion put on top of a salad, but I didn’t order a salad, so why put calamari on top of a bunch of greens that had no salad dressing on it? …hmm …maybe to make the dish look bigger than it was? Maybe because they were too cheap to give actual calamari in their calamari dish? Maybe it was to save money since the bar usually goes out of business every 3 months and then sold to new ownership whom repeat the same poor ethics?
Next the beef brisket tacos were the smallest tacos that I have ever seen, It was like ridiculously too small, jokingly microscopic, absolutely pathetic and quite insulting to the customer. I wish that I had put a 50 pence coin next to these tacos and took a pic for you viewers just to show the silly small scale of these tacos …and there was only 3 of these little things. Both of these appetizers were worth less than half of their menu charged price really, we were thoroughly disappointed.
Still hungry ofcourse I ordered a hamburger …my 3rd regretted dish. The bun was hard and stale, the meat was ground chuck and ground up in a course fashion so you get that non-crushed bone fragment chunk on your teeth when biting down while chewing. It was certainly not a fine ground beef like a Great American Hamburger. The cheese wasn’t even melted on top of the patty so the cook didn’t put the cheese on the beef patty while it was still on the grill. And the cheese was a very cheap cheddar Asda version slice that had zero taste to it, besides tasting like plastic.
The burger was overcooked to a well-down state after I had specifically asked the bartender taking my order to put down a medium-rare cook on the ticket and I even went to the cook myself (which you can see the kitchen in the main dining area at the back) and I asked the cook to make sure it was done in a medium-rare and he said no problem and that he will make it sure for me.
The burger dish said that it came with a salad on the menu but it did not, and when I asked the waitress where was my salad as described on the menu she said that the menu meant the greens on top of the burger …but which should NOT be classified as a salad. It should be known that when you order a hamburger at a restaurant that it will automatically come with lettuce, tomato, onions and pickles, this is a normal hamburger yes? …or do they think a hamburger is like from McDonald’s with just a simple patty and a regular bun? So it’s very mis-leading to the customer to write a salad coming with a burger plate and all you give is something that is already expected like hamburger toppings or fixings.
And then in the end when we walked out the chef gave me a thumbs up to me as if he was my buddy looking for approval of his poorly-cooked hamburger and the rest of his sub-par wretched appetizers. This “chef” …erm cook, and this pub gets far from my approval, more like my avoidance. Anyone could have done a better cooking job at home for themselves.
I had already known that this pub has changed hands 4 or 5 times in the last year and I think I know the reason(s) why. The service is terrible, the food is even more terrible, the menu changes constantly, a new “cook” NOT chef is hired every 2 months, there is zero consistencies in management, service, food quality and standards, and it is in a poor location with nothing else around.
This pub is absolutely terrible, and I will never recommend anyone to order anything from it’s menu besides a pint of beer which you would hope that they can’t screw that one up too. Anything more you are threading at your own peril. This was such a bad experience that I am going to copy-and-paste this same review on all restaurant review websites I’m on; Yelp, OpenTable, FourSquare, Harden’s, London Eating, The Good Food Guide, Zomato/UrbanSpoon, Dine, TripAdvisor, Google and Facebook.
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Bon Appétit
– The Phantom Gourmet Ego