John Harvey Tavern - (Near East Sussex, South East)

5 /5 Amanda Lucy: Eaten here more than once now and the food and service has always been spot on. The roast on a Sunday is a particular highlight with the meat and veg being cooked to perfection!

2 /5 PBD: A stunningly beautiful and very old tavern hidden down a side street in Lewes. It is fabulously pretty both on the outside and has exposed low beams on the inside. Very in keeping with the vibe of Lewes. Downstairs it has 2 rooms where you can eat and drink, and then upstairs it also has two rooms filled with bigger tables where you can eat and drink. It is a pretty big pub and offer a nice selection of food. Now the issue, service. Almost non existent. For the first 90m of our visit there were two young ladies serving and clearing for the whole building. As we were a leaving a gentleman joined them. As you can imagine this meant service was slow, very slow, painfully slow. We ordered food and it was 49 minutes from ordering to it arriving, and this was from a fairly limited menu. And the food was okay. £16 for a burger is an optimistic sum for what appeared on the plate. My over salted and only just warn chili was certainly not worth the wait. I now understand why they had so many seat available. So, Id suggest a drink if youre not in a rush on a slow day, otherwise maybe wander on.

5 /5 Mark Aukett: A beautiful REAL, tiny, old English pub in a tiny dead-end lane in the pedestrian only area of Lewes town. This is the real old English pub that tourists expect to see, if you have foreign visitors, bring them here. It even smells right (trust me its worth it just for the smell). Its owned by the famous Harveys Brewery a few hundred feet away, so its run as a flagship pub with everything kept traditional and no concession made to the modern (but soulless) machinery and efficiency that you usually find in town centre pubs. Expect to hit your head if youre over 510", the toilets are tiny, the stairs terrifying (you cant pass on them) the floors arent level, the lighting is erratic and NONE OF THAT MATTERS, BECAUSE ITS HOW ITS SUPPOSED TO BE. The food is about average for a decently run eatery, nothing spectacular but everything is tasty and well cooked. The beer is (obviously) the theme and its a bit skewed towards the brewery owners, but youd expect that. Staff are friendly, helpful, polite and efficient. Parking is non-existant, but being in the pedestrian zone of a large town centre, youd expect that. On a nice evening it means people can spill out into the lane outside. Theres plenty of paid parking nearby and strangely a 1 hour carpark in the lane that you cant actually get to unless you ignore the no vehicles signs in the pedestrian zone.

3 /5 Dave Hurd: Great looking pub 100 yards from the Harvey’s brewery, their tap house I suppose. Travelled down from North London for some pints of Best (their flagship brew) however despite there being 2 massive casks behind the bar both were off and no Harvey’s Best to be had. Then my food arrived with the starter and main course brought together although I had mentioned that one was a starter. Both starter and main were awful. About a dozen measly whitebait and instead of the chicken and leek pie that they advertised as pie of the day I got some dark looking beef pie with sad looking vegetables. Everything could have been so much better. Very disappointed.