The London Hotel

The London is an excellent local pub, with long history, great location & a super nice vibe - you can’t go wrong here. My only tiny gripe is being unable to nab a table at certain times, however, it’s a reflection of its popularity & not something I can whine about! Bathrooms are pretty dated but we all don’t spend much time in there do we… Service is consistently very good, there is always a decent amount of staff on & they are very well trained, knowledgeable & friendly. Nice inside & outside spaces to enjoy your time, they do get snapped up quick though. Quality range of events, live music etc too. Standout here is the food, it is very, very good. Menu options are wide, varied & well put together - plus, lots of specials pop up to keep things interesting. E.g went there on St Patrick’s day & they had a few spot on menu items, my steak & Guinness pie was really good. Have tried numerous other things & really can’t fault much… standout for me is their steaks & the Sunday roast - which is seriously excellent. Food delivered quickly too. So glad it’s one of my locals!

Summary: food and drinks are average to below average, atmosphere is pretty good. Service was alright I had lunch with some friends there today. The beer options are pretty limited to some major brands, no craft options. It was great to see they serve pints. Wine options were ok. Starters were good, we had salt and pepper squid, scotch egg and chicken nuggets. For mains we had southern fried chicken burger which was dry, wild boar ragu special and steak, all pretty average.

Great pub with an old school feel to it. Great range of beers and a menu with lots of comfort food options along with daily themed specials. Tonight was T-Bone Steak Thursday so we had this with a salt & pepper squid starter. Food was good and service fast & friendly. I’m keen to go back on a Sunday & try the roast!

Very popular. Had to make reservations for lunch. Good Sunday roasts available at good prices. Live music 3 to 6 pm.

Honestly one of the best pubs in Sydney. Great range of beers and the staff are super chill and friendly. The fact that it is dog friendly is a massive bonus. Has a great happy hour I ended up having my wedding reception here and everyone was amazing. Everything turned out super affordable. Darcy the manager is awesome I couldn't rate this place more.

Beautifully kept victorian pub. Beer choice is a bit limited, and food choices very good for carnivores but limited for vegetarians - would love to see a vegetarian spin on their Ploughmans! Clearly very popular with the locals for good reason.

Great cozy pub in a fantastic location, good food and beers!

Came here and while waiting to order we were lucky to get a balcony seat with a tiny glimpse of the bridge. Gorgeous night to people and dog watch. Fish and chips not as pictured. One fillet of fish and big chunky logs of potato arranged Jenga style (instead of proper chips), a table spoon of mushy pea. Tasty but the serve a little on the small side. The Guiness pie was tasty but not much filling in pie. The mashed potato serve was quite small - just a quinelle (spoonful) of potatoes and came cold. Everything was tasty. Atmosphere was great. Beer and wine choices great. Caught the ferry home and it was magical.

Done up beautifully inside this pub has been in operation for 140 odd years. Also pet friendly and with a decent menu. The menu lacks vegetarian choices and that's somewhat unfortunate. My fish and chips was nice and service was friendly. I will be back here again. It's in our neighborhood and a place I have come to off and on for almost two decades.

I quite liked this pub, even though it isn't one of those pubs that I would jump up and tell everybody how great it was, but it still has a really nice ambience about it. It's not really an inner-city trendy pub, but rather one of those quiet, out of the way pubs (even though it happens to be located on Balmain's Darling St). They have a really nice restaurant, and a balcony out the front that looks over to the old Congregationalist Church. It wasn't hugely crowded when I came here, but then again it is in Balmain, and it was a weekday. In fact it is one of those great pubs where you could simply kill huge amounts of time on a really nice day, simply sitting out on the balcony chatting with friends.

The London Hotel is a classic Balmain pub located on Darling street. It may not be the oldest pub around, or the most fashion forward, but there are definitely some features that make it noteworthy. I dipped in one sunny Saturday afternoon in search of something to quench my thirst (and tame the headache induced the night before). I grabbed a Little Creatures bright ale, one of the many on draft, and nabbed a stool on the veranda. With breathtaking views of the city and the iconic bridge popping out of the cityscape, it's easily one of the best views around. And what's more? You don't even have to leave your dog at home. The London allows pooches inside, and perhaps pets of all varieties. If you're so inclined to take your goldfish for a walk, I don't suppose the bar staff would protest. With pool tables, an awesome venue space for hire upstairs and a higher-end steakhouse connected, there's a little something for everyone at the London Hotel.

We came in with high expectations because this pub was voted best pub food in smh. So my ratings are probably skewed by the higher expectations. The pub is nicely situated at the quieter part of Balmain (means it's easier to find parking!). We had a nice stroll around the old neighbourhood before we had dinner. You can see fantastic views of the harbour bridge from the back streets next to this pub. We couldn't find a seat at the bar area so we went straight into the posh looking restaurant. The service was courteous and prompt but the food took a long while to arrive due to a function upstairs. I've finished half my wine by the time we finally got our food. The lamb rump was sensational. Very well balanced sauce (with chunks of macadamia mixed in) on the nicely cooked lamb. The perfect medium rare lamb rump. My order was a medium rare tenderloin. They stuffed up the order the first time (over-cooked my steak) but got it right the second time. I would rate the steak as good but not fantastic. I think all the media attention has set my expectations way too high. All in all, it's one of the better pubs in Balmain for good food and a good selection of wine. Check out the nearby exchange hotel if you want somewhere with great ambience.

The London has a great balcony for people watching and some pretty good food options. The ambience inside isn't great but the place is tops on a warm day as you're also allowed to stand outside on the street with a beer and watch the world go by. Dog friendly too.

Walked in and felt very uncomfortable so we left. Full of pretty drunk looking locals.

Best steak I have ever had. The bar would be perfect with a more comfortable setting (couches etc) - for a night out with friends it is not my first choice but if there is eating involved it is always my favourite.

By Thursday, when the world has usually drained much of the life out of me, there's only one thing that can patch me up to make it through to week's end. A proper pub steak, which actually tastes of steak, which isn't mean and dry, and which comes with fat chips and a mushroom sauce, is the tonic that makes Friday possible (okay, possibly also because it comes with popular beverage that also involves "tonic"). It's a miserable reality that this steak is harder to find in today's Aussie pub than you might think should be the case. I can't see that it should be a hard thing to get right. In fact perhaps many pubs would do well to just perfect honest pub food like fish & chips, bangers & mash, steaks and the SA favourite "schnitty", and leave the TexMex and other gastro pub horrors to those who are geared to staff and run a full kitchen that doesn't think TexMex is a bucket of sour cream and some factory-emulsified avo with sweet chilli sauce. Maybe they could spend the money that would've gone on a nightmarish proprietary sauce of exotic flavour, on, say, the steak. Give the punter a reasonable bit of steak with some garlic butter and be done with it. But I'm not a publican, and that's a tough gig so this is not for me to say. (Don't get me on the WTF-are-we-doing-trying-to-do-Tex-Mex-in-the-Southern-Hemisphere bandwagon. Because that'd be a bad place to go, and here on Yelp is a place to say constructive things, not to go to the dark side. And definitely don't mention Asian Food in Pubs, because that's usually pretty embarrassing too). Right. Back to "How to Do Thursday Nights". Go to a pub, one with a grill, and some simple foods that have been cooked simply and not scarily. Eat them. Have a nice cold drink. Maybe another. Go home, knowing that you've topped up your life points for the next day. Friday's a doddle with a bit of extra iron and saturated fat in your system (the best pub chips are fried in pure dripping). Now, you could go to The London for such a thing. A simple and honest wood-lined space, complete with tractor stools out front for bar dining with the best view possible, right down to the Harbour. A generous hearty plate of very steaky steak, tender and juicy and guaranteed to make you glad you didn't stay home and cook. Food that's what you go to pubs for. It's kept me going for years, give it a go and make Friday a better place for everyone. Bravo The London. Apub that does what pubs do well, consistently & reliably, is a wondrous thing.

Friendly service, Sunday roasts and best for last...There are always so many cute dogs at this pub!