Fox & Grapes

Good Pub Guide Recommended

Wide mix of customers for very popular pub with enjoyable food and drink; bedrooms

This 18th-c pub is ideally placed on the edge of Wimbledon Common and is extremely popular with walkers at lunchtime. There's always a good mix of both drinkers and diners and the efficient, friendly staff manage to keep things running smoothly, even at peak times. The spacious main bar, with a step between its two halves, has high ceilings with unusual chandeliers, all sorts of wooden and leather dining chairs around scrubbed or painted tables on stripped boards or parquet flooring, and built-in wall seats and settles with pretty scatter cushions. Purity Mad Goose, Wimbledon Common PA and a changing guest on handpump, 13 wines by the glass (plus two sparkling ones) and a few malt whiskies; background music. The bedrooms are light, airy and pretty. Parking is now pay-and-display. This is sister pub to the Malt House in Fulham (West London) and the Victoria in East Sheen (South London) and is part of the Jolly Fine Pub Group.

Bar food times: 8-3, 6-9.30; 12-4, 6-9.30 Sat; 12-8

As well as breakfasts (8.30-11am), the pleasing food includes sandwiches, roasted quail with crispy polenta, shimeji mushrooms and red wine jus, salmon and haddock fishcake with lemon gel and soft herbs, semolina gnocchi with beetroot purée and wild mushrooms, chicken scaloppine with couscous, grilled peppers, courgettes and basil, monkfish, mussel, prawn, calamari and octopus stew with garlic toast, confit duck leg with puy lentils, mushrooms, button onions and bacon, slow-cooked rare breed pork belly with sun-dried tomatoes and gremolata, and puddings such as warm chocolate brownie with salted caramel ice-cream and crème brûlée. ; steak night is Tuesday.