Princess of Wales

Primrose hill is my favorite place in London! It’s an amazing area that is a little let down by the local pubs… it’s not that any of them are bad, they just aren’t really that great. I feel that they rely on people being happy to just be in the area. That said, the Princess is probably one of the better ones, it’s slightly less pretentious than ones just down the road (the Engineer) but you still get that feeling That the locals are use to a higher standard of living.
The drinks menu is good, and priced in line with the local area. The food is OK, they have a brunch menu and a evening menu. From what I can tell its all cooked on the premises, the few times I’ve eaten here it’s been OK.
One let down for me is the staff, they seem to try but I’m not getting the warm welcome I’d expect from a local… it just seems forced.
If your on a pub crawl in primrose hill, definitely come to this place and have a few if your lucky you’ll spot one of the many local celebs!

Rude, inattentive staff. You’ll stand there in front of the bar for 15 minutes without one person asking if you want a drink or a table. I understand if they’re busy, but when the place is half-​empty, there is no excuse!
Won’t be back.

The BEST pub in Primrose Hill by a long shot. Quality food, lovely cozy atmosphere and the nicest most accommodating staff ever.
Great place to go for drinks and/​or dinner — the burger is amazing. And the Sunday roasts are delicious and it’s very fun to sit and enjoy a lazy Sunday meal set to the background of live jazz music.
After trying them all, this is the only place we will go for a pub meal in Primrose Hill.

Came here with friends and had the most amazing burger and pulled pork. Onion rings are amazing and the beer is nice and cold. Also cannot say enough about the staff. They are extremely nice and accommodating.

Airy, open pub in a great location. Go for a stroll to Primrose Hill after a pint at Princess of Wales. Book if you can!
The food is solid pub food. We especially liked the Thai Beef Salad and the extensive selection of wine. Selection of beers on tap was solid too.

The most delicious chicken and leek pie I’ve ever tasted, wonderful salads, and lovely atmosphere. It could not have been better.

The Princess wins as my favorite cozy pub to be in.
I returned to London September 2014 and the Princess is still my favorite pub to dine in around Camden/​Primrose Hill.
I always recommend making a booking for a Sunday Roast-​especially here.
They have such lovely composed salads and their soups are really wonderful.
The bread that accompanies is «healthy looking» sight on seen but really divine.
Of course I’ll be back here in 2015.
**Staff isn’t super friendly
**Wifi hasn’t worked in the 2 years I’ve been dining here

I’ve been switching between a 4 and 5 star rating for this place. It’s hard to fault the place, but I also wouldn’t say it’s «as good as it gets».
For the past few months I’ve been working in Camden. The high street is bustling with people so the standard of food and drink along there tends not to be great. My office prefers to head over into Primrose Hill where it’s a bit quieter. The Princess is an excellent example of the high quality pubs you can find when walking that extra distance.
The staff are friendly — not overly so but enough — but the reason we go here is for the nice drinks, delicious food and a very attractive venue. I’ve eaten here quite a few times but my top picks would be the mushroom and brie sandwich with fries (excellent value for money), the pie of the day (doesn’t have a pastry base but packed full of meat), and the pulled pork burger (juicy, very juicy).
If you have a Taste card you get 50% off the bill for up to 4 people. This brings the sandwich and fries to less than the price of lunch from Pret! Well worth a visit.

So, here’s the thing, I like the Princess of Wales. It’s a beautiful venue. Slap, bang between Chalk Farm and Regent’s Park. Big Windows looking out onto the beautiful wide streets and architecture of the area.
The place has a nice relaxing atmosphere. A great selection of beers, ciders and wines.
The food is reasonably priced and delicious. I had the Potato roti with mixed roasted vegetables, goats cheese, pesto cream and balsamic. Note to the meateaters, hteir burger stack looked and smelt incredible. It was enough to tempt me to eat meat again. But only tempt!
The thing that let’s the Princess down is service. It’s inconsistent. Some of the staff were charming and efficient, even during busy times. Others were slow and unfriendly, and in some cases charging differently. It lets down what is actually a really pleasant venue to while away an afternoon or an evening.

My favorite pub in London.
Bright, airy surroundings with comfortable and clean tables. Does not reek of sale beer and is not brimming with bar flies.
Excellent food, outstanding range of local and bottled beers. Wait staff actually know the food and drink, service is impeccable and friendly. The music/​sound track is an interesting mix of classic rock and just good music.
Crowd is interesting, good looking but the place is never crowded. I could just hang out there forever.

We didn’t actually eat or drink anything here due to the staff being so unfriendly, so I can’t speak for the cuisine.
I came here with some friends on a Sunday — we walked in, looking to grab a nice Sunday roast, as is our wont in merry old England.
The staff could have politely informed us that they were fully — booked, but instead they were rude and very unwelcoming. They had a table free for an hour, so we decided to sit down, but then they treated us like we were a nuisance, so we quickly left.

The Princess of Wales Pub is located near Primrose Hill, on a bright, wealthy residential street. A little challenging to get to, especially on a hot summer’s day with the London Underground acting up on a typical weekend, forcing you to squeeze on replacement bus services with sweat clinging on to everything.
I decided to pay this particular pub — which is quite out of the way for me — a visit as a result of winning Zomato’s weekly Write-​For-​A-​Bite contest. (They did originally offer me £50 off my bill at Bacco’s, but there was some complication with the restaurant, so they gave me £30 off The Princess of Wales instead.)
The pub was quiet upon our arrival at 1.30pm. (The transport delayed us for an hour. Welcome to London!) The sun was shining, and the shutters were wide open. The place is wood-​panelled all over, with the bar in the middle, and there’s a cosy garden-​basement just down the stairs.
English pubs are great for getting, well, English food. My sister ordered some chicken with gravy and a Yorkshire pudding, as it was Sunday, and they had roast specials with a live jazz band playing at 4pm! The chicken was tender, the gravy just-​right, and the veggies soft and generous.
Her husband got a prawn salad with beetroot, which was part of the Sunday specials as a main, but it was quite a scarce portion for the price. (approx. £13)
I got grilled sea bass with potatoes, sliced courgette, and smoked mackerel pâté. The sea bass was very impressive — it had a tasty, crispy skin, and soft meat. The mackerel pâté was particularly interesting — smoky, fishy, tasty, but rather oily — and went well with the cool courgette salad.
By the time the jazz band started playing, the pub was filled and buzzed with summer, pint-​induced liveliness. Dessert was a scoop of salted caramel-​flavoured ice cream atop a nut-​filled brownie. The brownie had rather hard edges, but a soft, cake-​y inside. The salted caramel ice cream was so good, I was tempted to lick the plate clean.
We ended up with a bill of about £60, but the voucher helped to pay half of that. The Princess of Wales is a great place to chill and have drinks with friends. Sunday brings you more reasons to visit, due to the roast specials and the live jazz band. A walk afterwards on Primrose Hill followed by a nap under a tree — there was no better way to complete this particular summer Sunday.

This is a great local pub and is everything you would want from your local pub – good food, great drinks, good service (you order at the bar), nice atmosphere and filled with locals. I live in St Johns Wood and wish this could be our local pub.
We wanted to try something new and found it on Unilocal.So we went for a roast and I ended up with the grilled chicken salad and kids had burgers and onion rings. They were the only kids in the place but a few had their dogs and everyone was well behaved.
They have a TV for sports matches on which was heaven for my son.
Lastly, the double chocolate and peanut butter brownie was delish! I look forward to bringing my husband and dog back…

A little disappointed with the Princess. I came on a groupon for breakfast and prosecco, and had a quick look at the website and menu and thought it looked quite nice.
And it was … for a pub. It’s a well-​maintained space with a great dining area upstairs and lovely period features. But the food was pretty basic and there just wasn’t enough per entrée. I got eggs benedict (£8.95) and ended up ordering a side of toast. But the eggs were cooked well, the sauce was tasty and the ham of good quality. My husband got the full English (about £9) and had to dip into my toast order as he was still hungry, too.
Service was ok, nothing special. Didn’t check on us after dropping off the food, even when our prosecco glasses (then our water glasses) went dry. When I finally managed to flag a server and order another glass, they surreptitiously upgraded our prosecco variety and so we were surprised by the charge of £6.95 per glass, not £4.95. Could be honest mistake but «I’ll have another» means just that — another of exactly what you served me before. Also, that side of toast set us back £3 … For toast.
It’s great that it’s about a 3 minute walk to Primrose Hill, so if you’re in the area and want to go for lunch/​pint/​breakfast before or after a stroll around the park, it’s a decent option. Not worth going out of your way for, though.

Okay, so in all fairness… The Princess of Wales is probably a great pub, but the «afternoon tea» is not something I would go back for.
The tea is in the upstairs section of the pub. It’s a great area and very nicely appointed. We went on a Saturday and the place was packed, upstairs and down. The tea itself was staffed by one person, so the service was a bit slow and spotty. We felt sorry for the guy because he was working very hard, but really needed some help. We never got spoons or forks (only one spoon small tea spoon came with the tea and we had to share it for the tea and potted lemon curd dessert). The sandwiches were okay, and the oat cake was wonderful, but the chocolate cake and scones were burnt. We asked if the scones were supposed to be charred, and he brought us new ones that were not any better. looking around, we saw that all were pretty much burnt. The lemon curd was good, but very small (served in a shot glass, half full).
So, I will go back to the Princess for a pub meal/​drink, but not for the tea.

We discovered the Princess of Wales through a Unilocal event and decided that evening that we need to come back. It was not just because they made it a fun event, but we were also impressed with the service outside the event. When we ordered some wine later that evening, my friend was curious about it and asked the waitress some questions and she was just so helpful … even brought us the bottle so we could read the description on the back.
So we came back during the week to have a quite meal and a chat. It was a very good decision, as the pub wasn’t overly full, but still had a nice crowd. Again the service was great, the waiter very attentive and very knowledgeable and happy to answer all our nosy questions. We shared a salad to start with. I had the lamb burger and my friend had the salmon. It was delicious and definitely on gastro pub level. The prices were also very reasonable! To finish a nice evening we asked the waiters advice towards cocktails and in the end he made us a special one which wasn’t on the menu. It was something with chocolate and orange … just yummy.
We had a great time and will go back for sure. I’m just sad that it’s too far away from home to be my local. I would go here all the time.

Nice warming atmosphere for a chilly autumn evening. Interesting décor — chandeliers that looked like they were made out of pieces of quilt or papier mache? — and helpful servers. One of the bartenders had just created a new cocktail which tasted like tiramisu — she actually sprinkled cinnamon over a flame as the finishing touch — and was selling it for a special price of £5. The scotch eggs were very tasty — not as greasy as I thought they’d be. i definitely want to come back sometime to try some other items on their menu, especially during Christmas cocktail season!

My dog licking drips of beer.
Me, sipping massive glass of wine.
The friendliest server ever. Irish? American? Who knows.
Amy Winehouse oozing out the speakers.
Memorable chips & curry for starter.
Tasty mushroom brie for lunch.
Fantastic brownie for dessert.
Didn’t want to leave — out into the rainy downpour.
Looking forward to returning.

Ahhhh the beautiful London summer. Splish Splash Splosh. We arrived at the Princess of Wales with drowned rat chic yesterday afternoon. The pub was our plan b when our Primrose Hill picnic was rained out.
I was struck by how many windows there were — great to people watch through (- people running for their rain sodden lives), and when the sunshine did rear its head they let tonnes of light flood in. Unfortunately that meant the front of the pub became roasting hot and uncomfortable to stay in, and we hat to retreat to a darker cooler corner. The windows actually looked like they opened out — so I will have to investigate whether they do open them in sunnier less changeable weather.
There are a few tables and seats outside the front of the pub, and annoyingly I didn’t realise until we were leaving that there is a basement function room with a small ‘secret garden’ downstairs. The garden also apparently having its own Banksy,
Drinks on tap served include London Pride, Hoegaarden and a rather ripe smelling 7.5% organic cider, which reminded me of my Bristol living days. There is also a television in the pub, showing sports feeds (although suspect there is no rhyme or reason to what they show).
Refreshingly a pub in Primrose Hill that is not too gastro. It’s unpretentious with a mixed crowd of old resident locals and people with dogs. The pub has bags of character and friendly staff who actually give cash back. The food which was all organic, seemed decent enough, although not particularly amazing. l had aubergine parmigiana — probably not much to dislike in that melted cheese obesity fest.
The only minor complaint is that although the ladies loos have three mirrors in them, all three mirrors are positioned above 6 foot high. This requires some very unladylike standing on the toilet seat to beautify yourself. Although perhaps this is deliberate attempt to speed everyone up.
There’s jazz on Sundays and a sign above the bar that also clams Friday as £5 cocktail night. However I enjoyed it very well as a lazy weekend afternoon pub to relax in. A stone’s throw from Primrose Hill, I am sure to be back.

The most traditional pub in a slightly disappointing area where posh/​gastro pubs are the main predator/​top dog.
Externally, a typical old fashioned pub. The inside has a more modern feel to it.
Had a decent pint of Brains Bread of Heaven.