The Old Bull & Bush

A modern, cozy pub with several rooms. We popped in Saturday afternoon and sat on a long, plush setee with comfy pillows (towards the back of the place, turn to the left). I ordered the Hand-​made Pumpkin & Amaretti filled Spiga Pasta in a white wine sauce with roasted squash, spinach and walnut pesto £10.50. It was fantastic! Firm pasta, creamy sauce and tender squash made my day.
The negs? My husband’s scallops app was mediocre. He said it was fishy and I even smelled fishiness wafting from the plate. The pea purée was incredibly bland.
He enjoyed his Liefmann’s beer but my Malbec was too weak for my taste. I expected a bolder flavour.

i was riding bike and pass by, found this amazing restaurant. The decoration is very stylish, cozy place, reasonable price, the food is delicious. Can’t find a reason to miss it!

I was very intrigued by the name when a friend invited me. Upon entering the restaurant, I was pleasantly surprised by its beautiful décor and cozy atmosphere. However, we soon learned that the restaurant was understaffed and it took ages to place an order, let alone receive our drinks. We even overheard regular customers complaining about the lack in service. Multiple times, we had to get up from our seats to go find the ‘missing waiter’. This is NEVER acceptable.
The three star rating is solely regarding the high quality and flavor of food. The soup of the day was fabulous parsnip. As an entreè I ordered the linguini pasta with crab and chorizo sausage, which was a memorable dish.

TERRIBLE SERVICE.
You order your food and never see it coming.
Wrong stuff showing up at the table.
AVOID!!!

Not sure why this place has such a low rating — I found it to be an exceptionally nice and cosy pub, and I really liked the food, too.

As someone else said in the review, the service is too slow or not organised especially on weekend when they are busy. We ordered two beef burgers today and had to wait for 90 min!!! That’s not acceptable. We asked a waitress if our order went through, and she only responded «I am sure it did, the kitchen is just busy». We finally got our burgers only after we spoke to the manager, saying we were waiting for 90 minutes already. It’s a shame that their foods are quite tasty but the service is so poor. We did not get any apology from any staff about the slow service either. I do not recommend to go there on weekend as they are very short staffed.
Also it’s a bit pricy…

The atmosphere is really cozy and gives off a feeling of an older pub with a large roaring fireplace and myriad of rooms, while still being very modern, updated, refurbished, and most importantly, CLEAN! it looks like there is a nice beer garden on the side although the night we went it was much too cold to try it out. I’ll probably give it shot if spring/​summer ever decides to come.
The menu is on the more expensive side. We got pork belly for about £14, and chicken for about £13 pounds. This is kind of ridiculous and I would normally never pay this much for food, but we were entertaining some friends who were visiting and had been wanting to check this place out for a while since it is walking distance from where we live, and right between Golders Green park and Hampstead Heath. The bartender was very friendly and helpful and let us try a variety of different beers and the few ciders they had. We had two different servers, and the first lady was slightly rude and not accomodating, but the server we had afterwards was very helpful and cheerful, even though he was clearly overworked and had to take care of the entire section by himself.
We got there pretty late which was great because we got to sit anywhere we wanted to and the pub has really nice window views and booth seating. My friends ordered the pasta and pizza said it was extremely mediocre. I dont know if I would come back for the food since it is overpriced and mediocre, but I may stop in for a drink every now and then as the atmosphere is decent and it is relatively close to home.

Nice for a quiet drink. Lacks any real atmosphere or excitement beyond that.

Well, I expected a nice, old and cosy traditional pub I was disappointed.
It is a quite modern gastro-​pub with hardly any atmosphere. Peculiar decoration.
Won’t go there anymore.
(I’m not saying anything against the food, which looked quite appetizing.)

This is what i would call Hampstead’s little hide-​out pub.
I have visited this place twice once during weekday evening for a quick drink with a friend and second time for Sunday lunch.
On both occasions i found the pub to be very busy, slightly understaffed and had to endure some waiting at the bar to be served.
However, the ambiance and variation in food and drinks made up for the negatives encountered.
The pub has 3 areas, outside beer garden that is enjoyable during the summer, an dinner area that is located on the side of the bar and the main bar that has sitting for casual drinks and food. On both occasions i have sat near the bar area.
The food is your average pub grub nothing too exclusive, i was left full and content.
I do think that this place is great for drinks as it has great ambiance.

Tucked away in a charming corner of North End between Golders Hill Park and Sandy Heath, The Old Bull & Bush bills itself as a «country pub and eating house.» In truth, since its renovation in 2006, The Old Bull & Bush looks and feels a lot more like an urban restaurant than a country pub – and a mediocre restaurant, at that.
The place certainly has historical pedigree. There has been a pub on the site since 1721, and the current building is Grade II listed. Artists William Hogarth (1697 – 1764), Thomas Gainsborough (1727 – 1788) and Joshua Reynolds (1723 – 1792) all drank here. The pub was the subject of a hit song called «Down at the Old Bull & Bush» before The Great War.
Yet one gets little sense of this history from the modern interior, and on a recent Sunday visit there was little here that felt like a «pub.» The bar has some period features – an open fireplace, an exposed beam running the length of the room, a plaster arch over the bar, a few well-​worn wooden tables and benches – but they are offset by such jarring modern juxtapositions as silver metal tables with gray felt-​covered armchairs, insipid charcoal drawings of wine bottles covering the walls, and cow-​skin rugs reminiscent of the sort of roadside souvenir stands in the American west that hawks faux Native American jewelry to hapless tourists. The staff were promoting Bloody Marys rather than cask ales; they offered a wine list, but no beer menu. Only two casks were on, both London Pride. A return visit on a weeknight proved better for the beer – they were pouring three cask ales, all in good condition – but the atmosphere still felt more like a modern restaurant bar, not a 300-​year-​old English pub.
Judged as a restaurant, The Old Bull & Bush gets mixed marks. The dining room has a pleasant ambiance: the black wooden tables are well spaced and provide a nice colour contrast to the light floor and walls. The indirect lighting provides a soft, comforting glow. We sat in a cushioned banquette built into a bay window that was spacious and comfortable.
Some of the food was good. I had a side dish of wild mushrooms sauteed in garlic, and they were fresh and meaty and delicious. Our appetizer was a well conceived dish of scallops set on a bed of cold mango and mixed vegetables; the scallops were fresh and sweet, and I enjoyed the contrasting textures and flavours of the fruit and vegetables. (I thought the dish called for a better sear on the scallops, but reasonable minds can differ.) And, unexpectedly, the espresso drinks we had to finish the meal were excellent, and proved the highlight of the meal.
On the other hand, our main courses were very disappointing. My wife, ever searching for mussels to equal those we had in Ballyvaughan (Co. Clare, Ireland), got a bowl of mussels so grossly overcooked they had the texture and flavor of a soapy kitchen sponge. My pan-​seared duck breast was poorly executed, and turned out tough and flavourless.
The service, too, was spotty. Our server was friendly, quick and attentive – when she remembered that we were there. Diverting her attention away from her telephone proved to be a challenge.
Overall, although there were high points, this was a disappointing dining and drinking experience at this price point.

Visited about a year and a half ago and I have to admit that I may be romanticizing the experience. As an American, I was absolutely giddy to be invited by friends to a pub…
I was on vacation in London for about a week staying at the Hoxton. The idea of travelling across town to meet up with friends in their gorgeous old home in their cool neighborhood and then to go off to the Old Bull and Bush was enchanting. In fact, I didn’t even know that pubs served food! I was just a dreamy tourist along for the ride.
I had the chicken (wonderful) and my bf (ex) had the pizza. I also sampled a bit from other’s plates and thought the food was absolutely delicious. Can’t really speak to the bar service because I don’t drink.
We were a big group of 12 people and sat around eating, drinking and laughing for hours. Afterward we all walked back to the old gorgeous home of my host. Best of all, we were treated to dinner so I’m not even sure how much the meal cost.
Our night at the Old Bull and Bush was one of the highlights of my stay in London.

The service is slow — having gone back here (I was with Matt J last time) the service just gets worse and worse. Which is a pity. It’s a glorious pub, great location, nice folk around, huge patio, really good menu, wide range of drinks, and the whole feel of it makes me want to like it.
I just can’t. Really, the service is the lousiest I’ve met in London. The few staff they have are lovely, but orders being got wrong after 20+ minute waits for a simple drink or two on several occasions is really not on.

Hmm. This place has a lot going for it. Huge building, lovely outdoor patio and seating area, backing on to Golders Hill Park and the corner of Hampstead Heath, beautiful furnishings!
I came here for a drink yesterday evening… and had to wait 20 minutes to be served, not a good start! Apparently, despite the weather forecast, nobody had thought that «more staff» might be a good idea, and so the bar was massively understaffed. Worse still, the kitchen had to close at 9pm because they were so far behind on orders with insufficient staff to cook + serve. Whoops.
I think it’d be a great place to come on a weekend afternoon (assuming that they have sufficient staff working those hours!) — but at the moment, it’s another one of these pubs which falls into the «could be outstanding, but currently barely scrapes into the mediocre» category.

Wouldn’t get too excited about this place. The best thing about it is that it’s the very same pub referred to in the old East End song Daan at the owld bull an bush But unfortunately since it’s refurb a few years ago it’s not retained much or any of it’s original charm. Can’t tell if this place wants to be a bar, a pub, a gastropub or pretending it’s a country cottage. Boring clientele. But still far preferable to any pub in Golders Green down the road.

this is a a gastro done wellat last. the beers on offer are excellent and not too cold. what i really like is the space, they havent tried to ram in lots of tables. the effect this has is hugely relaxing and it makes it much more fun for the pub-​goer. the snacks are also pretty decent although the food is never above average. the only thing this place could do maybe is put sky in one of the rooms, because at the moment there’s nothing to really attract you to the pub other than the space because the location is neither here nor there.

Recently, the Old Bull and Bush was redone in the gastro pub style that so many pubs have been changed to, and the change was all for the better. Located in a great area, close to the Heath, the pub offers up some great food and has a lovely garden to chill out in during the (hopefully) hot summer nights.

Conveniently located at the bottom of Hampstead Heath this cavernous gastro pub has retained elements of its former charm. Its location is its main draw card as well as the heath you have Golders Hill Park opposite which means there is a large target audience and its therefore always pretty busy. In Winter there are log fires and it has a cosy appeal. In summer the outside seating is round the car park and main road which can be a little off putting. Prices are somewhat steep but food is good and there are a range of different beers on tap and a varied wine list. Best for having a few pints of Fruili after a day sunbathing on the heath. Also does Sunday papers so can be good for a hair of the dog