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The Guard House is a pub that’s not really a pub. Sure, it serves pints and a couple of the rooms feel snug, but the rest of the place is all tables and chairs and the sound of clashing cutlery.
It’s a restaurant, in other words, and an attractive one at that, full of eye-catching details – like patchwork floor tiles and an open-fronted kitchen – and situated within a gorgeous building dating from the late eighteenth century in Woolwich’s Royal Arsenal. It’s a shame, then, that everything else about the place fails to deliver.
The high point of our meal was two shaky starters that were just about saved by a lovely spicy chutney and some fragrant leaves, both of which gave their respective dishes some much-needed lift. It was downhill from there, however, thanks to a flavourless cauliflower fondue and a deeply underwhelming crab, spinach and cod cheek gratin that looked like it had been left in the oven too long and came with the kind of flimsy bread that you get out of a plastic packet from Sainsbury’s. For now, this pub should stick to serving drinks.