Edinboro Castle, Camden, London

Love it in the beer garden oh summer hurry up X

Lovely pub with an epic beer garden with plenty of barbecue action in the summer! I've wound up at this pub following more rained-off Regents Park picnics than I could care to name, but it's always an agreeable compromise.

Bit pricey, but this is a really nice place to hang out with friends and they have a great selection for drinkers of all varieties, including plenty of decent wines and fruit beers.

OMG - I really did think she'd been abducted.

My housemate and I rocked up here for a beer on the sunniest afternoon so far this year. We were in a good mood having been in the sun and finding a table straight away in the dappled light of the courtyard garden. It's really buzzy outside with rows of picnic tables in bright pink, blue and lime green. Once seated my flatmate said she'd dash to the bar for drinks. She was gone for over 30 minutes!
Upside: the guy standing next to her also not being served bought her a tequila shot when he was graced with service.
Downside: She, as I, hates slow bar service - surly / inept / badly trained etc. It's really not rocket science to gauge who was next and pour a pint quickly. We've both done it, as have, I'm sure, many, many people less capable than ourselves.
As with any bar / restaurant, it doesn't matter how nice the terrace, how cool the music or how many types of beer are on tap - IF YOU CAN'T GET ANY DRINKS, WHAT'S THE POINT???

I don't even know why we bother going into this place. Ordinarily I'd use my stock answer, "spite", but a trip to the Edinboro Castle is totally an exercise in self-humiliation.

As many other posters have indicated, it should be a very reasonable boozer. It's quite a roomy, airy building and the beer garden's widely known for being one of the nicer ones around.

The range of beers looks promising, and when we were there a promotional poster announced that bottles of wine were sold at crazy discount knockdown prices if it happened to be raining outside. The more cynical reader might speculate that instead they're just jacking wine prices up ridonculously when it's sunny, but hey.

We've been attempting to enjoy this pub for several years now, and the problem is always the same - getting service is impossible. I was in on a Monday night, and there was virtually nobody around: just myself, another guy further around, and a girl in the process of being served. Quite what the barman was doing is anyone's guess, although it was definitely full of sound & fury. 4 or 5 other bar staff flitted past behind the bar, ignoring we impotent would-be drink purchasers. Maybe they wouldn't serve us because they were too young? Who knows.

It seems a silly thing to go on, and on, and on about, however the base function of a pub is to be able to get some drinks & then go and relax in whatever atmosphere the venue provides with your friends, and all I can say is i you're planning a trip to the Edinboro Castle then make sure that whoever's going to do a bar run has plenty of free minutes on their mobile plan, because that's the only way you're going to get to chat to them.

This pub has been a local to me in a home and a work sense in the past, and despite several inexplicable bits of renovation and a number of passing years, the synopsis has to be: FAIL.

Unless you want an airy room to sit with your friends and not drink. It's an absolute boon in those stakes.

• Special mention goes to the kitchen, by the way, for taking so long to figure out that we'd ordered & paid for food, and to work out how this offering might be prepared, cooked & served, that when we went up to enquire 40 minutes later they bluntly asserted that the kitchen was shut. Bravo. Presumably all the kitchen staff were flat out doing something behind the bar.

Until I walked round the corner I had not realized that I had been here before. Long long ago…well during the last World Cup. On that day I found a busy pub showing the football before serving food from an outside barbecue to many punters taking in the early summer sun on a lazy weekend.

Coming back a few weeks ago in pretty much the opposite set of conditions (it had been dark for hours…temperatures falling) and on a weekday evening, I found quite an empty pub with comfortable chairs and a couple of real Ales, including the wonderful Adnams Kolsch that has been doing the rounds of late.

So in conclusion this is a good pub whenever and whatever the weather….although I gather from other reviews it might be a bit of a pain at peak drinking times.

They're currently renovating the whole pub, so half of it seems to be closed off with a false wall and the toilets have relocated to a portacabin outside, but I'm still a big fan.

Haven't been Thursday-Saturday, nor in the summer, so I can't speak for the summer weekend crowds, but it seems to be pleasantly quiet right now during midweek, so definitely worth a trip if you're looking for a quiet drink with a friend or two.

Very good beer selection, reasonably priced, though you're likely to end up with a fair amount of head on your pint so ask them to top it up if they try and fob you off with an inch of the stuff.

Decent food, not overpriced either. Looking forward to visiting again in the summer when they're finished renovating and have opened up the garden properly - apparently they cook a very good BBQ when it's warmer too.

Classic 'gastro pub' in Camden. This pub is quite 'out of the way' from the Camden high street just off Parkway.

I've been here daytime and evening and it gets quite busy in the evening times. Lovely and large outside area with some bits heated and many, many tables!

Good selection of food wines and beers and they have Frulli on tap!

Good times.

Wow, quite a few mixed reviews below! The Edinboro Castle Pub in Camden (in my personal opinion) is a cracking pub, except for the crowds on Friday and Saturday nights. You can expect to queue for at least 20 minutes if you’re trying to get a beer at 10pm on a popular night. But hey, so much of London is like this these days. The enormous beer garden makes up for most of the Edinboro Castle’s shortcomings.

This is a great pub for hanging out with friends and relaxing. Not tried the food yet, but i’m told they do reasonable burgers.

Probably a top 10 pub in Camden.

Most pretentious pub in Camden…?

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use the term “wnkey” on Qype… If I cause any offence please just let me know and I’ll change it to something more banal. “Self-consciously aware of their own need to be different. So, so different. Resulting in being much the same as so many other places across town”. You see? Wnkey is just a bit more concise.

As far as Camden is concerned, this place is different, in a same-same-but-different way. Bless. It’s quirky, cavernous, and quite interesting in character. And it has an enormous and quite lovely garden in which to drink beer.

Ah.

First catch your beer.

Your first challenge is to get to the bar. This can be tricky. The bar is almost invariably rammed. Even if the rest of the pub is empty, people are queuing three, four deep at the bar. The reason for this soon becomes apparent. If there are more sullen, detached, idle and incompetent bar staff in London I would like to know about it. Know about it so I can go and shake their disaffected, grouchy hand. The service is just appalling, to the point that any redeeming features of this place have a dark, dark shadow cast over them.

Your chances of getting served seem to depend largely on pot luck. Or how “cool” you look. This could be nonsense, but I don’t own a pair of converse trainers and tend to blame most of my misfortune in life on this and this alone. The sensible answer could be to buy some converse trainers, but who wins then, huh?

When you eventually do get graced with service, or the closest they can come to it, you are likely to be disappointed. I gave up drinking beer here. IF there is any bitter on it is invariably sour. Much the same goes for the Guinness. The wine list fails to impress and everything is overpriced. This is obviously well known and you will usually see several people in the beer garden being oh so subtle as they pour cans of Strongbow into their glasses.

I genuinely believe that this could be a nice place, if it wasn’t screaming “NO, NO! You don’t understand me! I’m a tortured genius!” quite so loudly, and if the staff were a little more… well at all switched on.

Great potential, thoroughly let down by shoddy staff and a painful self-awareness. But in the summer, the beer garden really does draw 'em in… and probably me too… like a metaphorical fly to an allagorical turd…

Once I got past the purposeful mispelling of Edinburgh i’ve started to become quite a fan of this place.

First off it sells an above average selection of beers, ciders, etc and serves very decent food, especially snacks and sharing platters.

It’s a very large place with lots of seating so getting a table during the week isn’t too tough although at weekends it does get very busy.

This is a lovely spot for a sundowner after a lazy afternoon in one of the nearby parks (Regents or Primrose Hill).

Drinks were reasonably priced and the atmosphere was pretty lively for a Sunday.

One objection is to some of the clientele, who are not really the pubs responsibility, but still an adequate way of judging an establishment. We had the drunken lout who hovered too near and for too long with abusive conversation (unpleasant). Also got bumped and breathed upon one too many times (manageable).

But it’s so super being out under the sunny skies with beer in hand.

This really should be a great pub.

Nice contemporary decor, decent space and seating, huge beer patio (you can’t call it a 'garden’ if it has no grass), great selection of beers, promising-looking food, reasonable location. So what’s not to like?

Well, I’m going to say what pretty much everyone else says about this place… unless you’re going to smuggle your own drink in, then you will spend the evening (or day) very thirsty, or frustrated, or both.

Sure, it gets busy, especially in the summer. But that is not the reason why it is so hard to get a drink. The reason is much more fundamental - the staff are consistently appalling. Without exception. I have had the misfortune to have to visit this pub regularly over several years (not through choice, I hasten to add), and I have had lots of opportunity to observe this problem in detail (whilst waiting for 45 minutes to get served).

Here is the thing. You get anywhere between 7 and 10 people behind the bar, all looking busy. But I challenge you to watch any one of them, to see what they are actually doing. In most cases, they will be actively walking up and down the bar just 'looking busy’ (moving glasses from one end of the bar and back, popping out the back, opening and shutting fridge doors, etc.). Very little time is actually spent serving drinks to customers, despite the appearance of busyness.

It’s impressive, in a way. And bearing in mind I have seen many different people working behind the bar over the years, all exhibiting this behaviour, you’ve got to wonder if they receive special training.

On the plus side, if you can ever get a drink, it’s a cool place to have a drink in the summer!

One of my favourite places to drink in the summer when you can take advantage of the huge beer garden and refreshing fruit beers (inclusing Fruli) that the Edinboro Castle has to offer. I’ve also enjoyed the barbecues that they have here. The interior inside is quite nice too. My only complaints would be the state of the toilets (and the queues! I know this is traditional for ladies but I’ve never been here and not had to queue, even midday) and the queues at the bar. It’s not uncommon to wait 20 minutes to get served here so plan your drinks far in advance and if possible, get jugs of whatever you’re drinking!

Nice pub just off the main road (turn off eversholt street near Woolworths). The pub is large inside with a few sofas at the back and has a beer garden for the summer months. They serve food and offer many drinks. They have a winter drinks menu and do Winter Pimms and Mulled Wine.

This pub is not very close the Camden market, but the short walk that takes you to get there (around 10 minutes) is definitely worthwhile. A nice interior and a huge beer garden, what else can you ask? The price is not bad at all, and the selection of beers is wider than usual, including tap Hoegaarden and Franciskaner among the regular brands.

The garden has long tables combined with U-shaped tables where you can create your own atmosphere with your friends. The heaters outside are really welcome, as their offer of free food and water for your dog. They also have many courses if you feel like eating something.

The only problem I’ve found is the overcrowding on Saturday nights, but any other day you can find a place to seat and enjoy your drinks.

This place should be so much better. It has a huge beer garden that should make it an obvious choice for Sunday afternoon drinks during the summer and they often put on barbies that add to the food choices but the service is consistently awful. The bar staff are disorganised and make no effort to keep tabs on which people have been waiting the longest. It’s a huge letdown and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone there only to leave for somewhere else after the wait for service proved too frustrating.

Nice pub for Sunday lunch, choice of roasts and a vegetarian option, not to pricey. Advisable to arrive early as it tends to get very busy and the food does run out! There is a good range of beer and wine, not cheap though. Great beer garden with a great barbeque in the summer serving a refreshing change from burgers etc.The location is great for Regents Park, however children not allowed in the beer garden after 6pm!

Lovely pub, fantastic beer garden (and I don’t even smoke anymore so it doesn’t concern me as much) but the worst barstaff in the world. No pattern in serving/unfair, just don’t bother if you’re gonna arrive same time as the crowd after work.

Yet another pub in London selling Deuchars but whilst that is a plus the staff’s inability to prevent long waits occuring at the main bar (there looked to be at least 7 of them on duty so in theory they were prepared for a busy night before the Bank Holiday) was baffling as well as annoying.

Those of our party that ate pronounced the fish finger sandwiches to be very good (& the chef did at least make them after they had officially stopped serving grub) but despite that & the fact they had 4 ciders on draught as well as guest ales the overall experience was nothing special.

Curious way of spelling Edinburgh too …

Quite possibly the biggest beer garden in London, unless the Windmill down Clapham way is counting the entire Common these days. So maximum points for that - however, ever since it had a refurb a few years ago it’s become a wee bit rubbish at service and quite a lot overcome with self-importance (although I’m not sure pubs themselves can have attitude?)

It’s always going to do well in summer with its massive garden and being not too far away from Regents Park, it gets a load of post softballers etc. But that does mean it’s utterly rammed at times and impossible to get a beer this side of Autumn.

The long queues in summer can also mean people decide to leave their sense of humour at home and all too often it can get well…a bit 'arsey’ at the bar. So maybe a better place to visit on a Sunday afternoon or early in the week or er in winter.

Food is quite tasty when they aren’t too busy, but usually a bit average when they are busy - so again worth bearing in mind. It’s also a bit pricey for what it is.