With customers arriving for brunch and leaving at last orders, plus haircuts in the snug and Monopoly at the bar, this pub has been voted by OFM readers as the perfect local’s local
It’s a quiet Tuesday lunchtime at The Crown in Hastings, and the atmosphere – fairly typical, as it turns out – is mellow and bucolic. Sunlight is slanting in through the windows, highlighting the dark walls and floorboards of the U-shaped interior; a local sits at one end of the bar, nursing a pint and reading a paper; a party of trippers make appreciative noises over their recently arrived ham, egg and chips; and landlady Tess Eaton is supervising a shipment of organic vegetables from nearby Fairlight Hall. “I just had a lady say that this was the best pub she’d ever been to,” she grins, as the courgettes are ushered back to the kitchen. “Completely unsolicited, too.”
Actually, The Crown gets that a lot; the winner of OFM’s Best Place to Drink award is the Platonic ideal of the welcoming local. It sits at the end of the much-photographed All Saints’ Street, between the picturesque jumble of Hastings Old Town and the beachfront, and attracts a winningly diverse crowd, from dyed-in-the-wool locals – fishermen, foragers – to the more recent arrivistes deemed “DFLs” (Down From London) to curious gourmets and casual drinkers. They all sense that Eaton and her partner Andrew Swan have gone the extra mile in everything from their handmade tables (courtesy of Hastings & Bexhill Wood Recycling) to their painstakingly seasonal menu (duo of mackerel or tempura courgette flowers, rather than cod and chips or vegetable lasagne) and local-pump selection of ales and ciders (from the likes of the Romney Marsh Brewery and Kentish Pip Cider). The art on the walls is covetable stuff by local artists; fresh-cut flowers, from Eaton’s mother’s garden, decorate the tables. Even the soap in the toilets is scrupulously sourced, from the Hastings Soap Co.
Related: OFM Awards 2017: Best Place to Drink – the runners-up
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