27 Barnes High Street, London, SW13 9LW www.coachandhorsesbarnes.co.uk
Chloe overloads on her starters but finds the refurbed Coach And Horses is doing pub grub for the masses well and only needs a few tweaks to do better.
What’s even better is the garden is not only family friendly, but dog friendly too, meaning you get a nice mix of patrons.
We started the evening with one of the Coach and Horses’ sharing boards which we thought would be roughly equivalent to two starters but, in hindsight, would probably have been enough. However, it was worth every mouthful. The squid, which in so many pubs is often over cooked and a tad rubbery, was cooked wonderfully and not over-battered.
The absolute revelation of the board were the crab fries – fries topped with crab meat topped with melted cheese. I’ll be disappointed the next time I have fries and they don’t come like this.
As we didn’t discover our blunder with the size of the sharing board until it was too late, next came the mains. After the joy of the sharing board, they were a little disappointing, but perfectly adequate pub grub dishes.
Needless to say, by this point we were far too full for dessert. However, I can recommend the gin and tonics at the Coach and Horses, as they come with a generous glug of gin, in one of the large bowl-shaped glasses that seem to be very popular these days.
I enjoyed my evening at the Coach and Horses – a lovely garden which is great when the sun is shining and some good food. Would I rush back, probably not, but if I fancied an evening in a good beer garden near the river, I’d definitely stroll back.