The Monkey Puzzle

Awesome place for a quality hangout with friends - we had a great time when we were here last weekend. Our waitress had the most amazing attitude, she was dressed properly and was very communicative which set the mood for the night.

The Monkey Puzzle is definitely a pub for the discerning primate. Warm welcome, cool beer, hot food. All served with a smile by the Irish landlord with a sense of humour to brighten up your day. Check it out.

The Monkey Puzzle has been a refuge in a sea of confusion. London is one of the most exciting cities of the world and there a few places where one can feel truly at home. The Monkey Puzzle has been exactly that for many years. It is always a pleasure to walk into a pub 5000 miles from home and be welcomed as if you lived around the corner. Great food and refreshment along with sincere service and friendship will always win us over. Thanks so much for so many things things thi o i oi da w ci

We had a great evening in the Monkey Puzzle Pub (Paddington). Twenty of us travelled from Limerick, Ireland, and we stayed in a hotel in Sussex Gardens (right across the road from the pub!). Gary Griffin gave us a brilliant welcome. The food was excellent and sooo reasonable. The atmosphere was lovely and the drink was even lovelier. Fabulous hospitality and a great evening all round. I would highly recommend it!

My friends and I were pleasantly surprised with this typical British pub. If you come to London as a tourist and want to enjoy dinner and drinks in a true English atmosphere, this is the perfect place. We were the only foreigners in the pub, yet we were nicely welcomed and not looked upon at all. We enjoyed the place a lot, it was really nice to be in place designed for locals and not for exclusively touristic purpose. Slightly out of the center but not to far either, it is close to a serie of hotels, a couple of minutes from the Susssex Garden bus stop.
The pub is quite spacious, with two large wooden rooms decorated in a cosy and retro way, and a yard in the front with tables you can sit at when the weather allows it. The staff is very nice and service is as fast as it can be.
The food was delicious and quite unexpensive. We went there on a Saturday night, there was a barbecue in the front yard. I had chicken and vegetables kebab served with a pita bread and salad. Meat and veggies were grilled directly on the barbecue. Quality was excellent, quantity was way sufficient; it was not your usual kebab with two peppers and a half and three pieces of meat, it was two long kebabs of various fresh vegetable and perfectly grilled chicken with a nicely spicy dressing. My friends had cheeseburgers and were very satisfied as well. The pub serves fish and chips during the week, but not during the week end, so they said.
There was a good variety of beer and ale, as well as several stronger alcohols and wine. We had three glasses of ale for 4 pounds and a half, which is quite unexpensive for London.
All in all, I recommend this pub for dinner and drinks before going out to a club, as we spent a very nice evening, and will certainly come back next time we are in London.

Although situated in a modern building (unprepossessing, as ahunter says), this Badgers pub is much cosier inside than it looks from the street and is well known for its impressive summer barbecues. The interior has lots of wooden furniture, and feels more like an old-fashioned local. (One wall has a large map of 18th century London on it).

The clientele are, in fact, mostly locals and are a friendly and down to earth bunch, as are the staff. Nice Dorset real ales, including Badger Best and Tanglefoot.

At first glance this looks like a pretty ropey pub. Nestled beneath an enormous local authority building, I was expecting this to be a knuckle duster and tattoo sort of place. Amazingly, it was the complete opposite. The chef stood outside firing up the barbecue, ready to grill some bangers and pork chops. Inside was warm and welcoming. I felt really looked after by the landlord who ushered us towards a big table to accommodate our group of 20! Good beer to. I recommend trying one of the winter ales.

I really didn't want to leave the pub after 1 pint.