Most people of a certain generation will equate Citizen Smith with Tooting harking back to the 1970's TV series of the same name so it seems strange to see him crop up recently on Putney High Street.
Citizen Smith is a new cocktail style bar that is most notable (for me anyway) for its beer range.
There are one or two pumps of cask ale - a Sharp's beer (usually the seasonal or Cornish Coaster rather than the ubiquitous Doom Bar), and Meantime London Pale Ale.
The tap (or keg) options range from Meantime, (Stout, Kolsch and the delicious, Smoked Bock) to Budvar to US offerings such as Anchor and Sierra Nevada.
The bottled list runs to about a thirty beers from around the world - some of the highlights being Sierra Nevada Porter, Goose Island IPA, Brewdog Punk IPA, Dark Star Espresso, Little Creatures and Coopers.
The beer list is well researched and thorough with detailed tasting notes that make the mouth water.
This is not your normal pub, it is part of a growing trend in London to offer good quality beer at the most trendy and modern bars - and something to be celebrated. I suggest you give it a try as you move down the High Street from the Wetherspoon's towards the Young's and Fuller's pubs as you make your way to the Bricklayer's Arms - still Putney's highlight for beer lovers.
The vibe in Citizen Smith is buoyant and lively whenever I have visited and the mood is good. I have often been the oldest person in there but it is full of Putney's beautiful people sampling beautiful beer among their cocktails.
Food is pizzas and salads with the back of the bar being the dining area. Open late on weekends when the music turns up a notch but the beer still flows.
This is a rarity - a beer led cocktail/wine bar and I hope it does really well on the beer front and becomes an essential visit for South West London's beer lovers.
5 comments:
Steve
sounds great, does it open during the day?
Yes, open daily from noon. Might seem a bit "lame" in the daytime I guess though unless they are getting a good lunchtime pizza crown in.
What's a pizza crown?
Apologies - that should be pizza crowD.
Thanks for the tipoff. I popped into the Citizen Smith Saturday lunchtime on the way to various pubs in Richmond and Kingston. My zone 1 and 2 travelcard stops at Putney and I can get the bus the rest of the way!
They had Sharps Cornish Coaster and Sharps Winter Berry Ale. Served in old man's glass dimple pint mugs, the quality was average to poor. Fortunately it was mostly empty and there was table service, the default it seems, and the beer was £3.50/pint.
Other gen from the day, the Northumberland is doing beer now (thanks to info in latest London Drinker, was able to do that after CS). At 2pm they had trays of filled rolls on the bar, £1.60 each, a welcome addition to the full menu. The Adnams Explorer was only mediocre.
In Richmond, the All Bar One has started doing real ale again as has a lot of the chain. Beer was suddenly stopped after a change of ownership a few years back, just after they had gone into Cask Marque! Beer is now appearing in quite a few of them again, another chain reverting to real ale. The Richmond one was the only I never got to with real ale, a good score to settle and completes all London ABOs with real ale.
In Kingston, the Slug & Lettuce is now real selling Bombardier at £2.30/pint. Again, the S & L chain is putting real ale back (or introducing for the first time) into their pubs.
Finally, I got some real ale in the Cocoanut at last, now back to an ordinary pub after some years as a music based venue and no handpumps. Well done Fullers! That completes all the London Fullers pubs with real ale apart from the Sun & 13 Cantons in Soho which has not had real ale for sometime.
A pleasing day, and so good to see the big chains restoring real ale to their pubs!
See you at Battersea on Thursday.
Cheers,
John.
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