Jolly Gardener, Putney, London

Although this is my local and my friends and I tend to go there quite regularly, this is not the best pub in London. It is however one of the best in Putney.

It is quite pleasant and I do like the Deco and drinks selection. Watch out for the annual cider festival in the summer - this is always a good week!

It's a very friendly and warm place that offers board games and sock monkey Sundays where you can make your own little sock friends.

However, although this place has a good selection of drinks, this can be quite limited if you go there as regularly as we do. The quality also changes depending on the bar staff serving you.

The food is a little high in price for my liking and there is a limited selection. The quality is usually good - however we have had some issues before with the burgers and Sunday Roasts.

Whilst they have a lot of tables, it can be very hard to find a seat as this pub can get very busy on weekends.

That said they have a lovely beer garden and ladies should have a good look at the wall paper in the toilet. It has on many occasions raised a giggle!

A cool pub. Nice atmosphere inside, although it can get a bit crowded. It has a deceptive amount of space and lots of comfy seats. The outside area is spacious and full of healthy looking plants.

I first came here 3 or so years ago when Putney was Austin and Evil's favourite place, and now I've been a few times recently since Luke moved into the area, and it hasn't really changed. The food looks good but I've never tried it.

They serve Sierra Nevada here which is only the third place I've seen it

My son who lives in Putney took me here for a Fathers Day lunch and I have to congratulate him on his choice.
London Pride, Doom Bar and Black Sheep on draught gave me the first difficult choice of the day. Food was good although the Sunday menu was slightly limited .
Give it a try

Located in a quiet surburb of Putney, the Jolly Gardeners is one of my favourite pubs in the capital. It has the feel of a local pub somewhere deep in the country and is unique in that it offers arts and crafts with your pint. On certain days of the week, drinkers can go home with their own handcrafted sock-puppet whilst the quiz on a Tuesday is great as it offers a beer-tasting round.

The food is fantastic and I particularly can't get enough of the nachos, rather than just serving the standard tortilla chips heaped with salsa and guacmole, the tortillas are flour tortillas freshly cooked and straight from the fryer. The sausage and mash comes topped with fried parsnip slices so you can tell that its far from your usual pub fodder.

The beer garden is out the front and usually packed with a youngish crowd, however having said that it's also a great place to bring your parent's for a meal.

This pub is nice for a drink, and has a nice atmosphere, but I do have a query over the food. Two friends and I ordered scampi and chips for £8.50, and when the plates arrived, there were 6 tiny pieces of scampi on each (large) plate - for £8.50!! Tasty, but negligible! We weren’t very impressed. The waitress and manageress had the grace to look embarrassed when we complained, and the manageress did ask the chef to cook us some more. But if we hadn’t complained, we would have basically paid £8.50 for what was essentially not even a starter. The food aside, it is a nice pub.

This is a great pub away from the main drag of Putney high street. Really cosy, plenty of seats and GOOD BEER selection. Specifically for me, you earn a star if you serve Frulli. On tap. It has to be ON TAP.

Great for boozy week nights, dates and cosy chats.
The food menu looks good, although I was coerced into going halves for a platter, which I generally don’t like. Everything apart from the 8 sticks of cucumber and carrot (4 each) were fried. Not very imaginative. The falafels aka dry balls of turd were especially memorable. I hope the rest of the food is better as this is a lovely place to be sat on a cold evening.

One of the better pubs in Putney which seems to have something on every night of the week.

Monday: £10-a-bottle wine deals
Tuesday: Pub quiz
Wednesday: craftwork night - jewellery and model-making
Saturday: a DJ

So far, so normal - but how many other pubs hold a themed sock monkey competition on the last Sunday of every month?

None that my sock monkey can think of.

As well as the beers mentioned by johnsibly in his review, they keep their real ale well too (Deuchars and Halloween Surprise when I visited earlier this week).

We sat by the tasteful gas fire and had an even more tasteful bowl of chilli from their wide-ranging menu. Just the thing to warm up on a crisp autumnal afternoon.

The staff always seem helpful and jolly, even the new Aussie barman who served us the other day after India had beaten them at the cricket (we felt obliged to remind him).

The Jolly Gardener is one of my favourite pubs in Putney. It has a funky décor: a mixture of old tables and sofas mixed with modern decorations and art. A range of board games are available to play, as well as an old fashioned table top arcade game.

The serve a range of great beers such as Budvar, Sierra Nevada, Fruli, and also a range of real ales. The food is good, but more fancy than some other local pubs. An excellent place to enjoy a Sunday lunch, they also serve a breakfast fry-up for only £5.

The atmosphere varies greatly: during the day it’s generally fairly quiet, but on some evenings they have a DJ, or one of the themed nights. Whatever is on I always seem to have a great time, and the other patrons seem pretty easy-going too. I once visited on a wintery evening around Christmas they has a Caribbean Christmas theme, with a steel drum band, grass skirts and cocktails – pretty off the wall but really fun.