The bar runs on walk ins, so arrive early on a music night to claim a seat near the room. Friday and Saturday draw a crowd, and the theatre upstairs keeps its own schedule.
The Tabard stands on Bath Road in Chiswick, a Grade II listed pub that Norman Shaw drew in 1880 for Bedford Park, the first garden suburb London ever built. Two bars, a beer garden, and a small theatre share one address, and the room carries its age without performing it. The pour and the bill of music have kept pace with the building.
Anyone who reads a pub by its cask list will settle in fast. Ten hand pumps turn over a bill of British and imported ales, and the music runs through the week, from a Friday piano to a Saturday band. Anyone after a quiet corner with no program on a weekend night will want a different door.
One long Arts and Crafts room runs back from the street, warm wood underfoot and tilework from the period lining the walls. CAMRA records the interior as nationally important, which keeps the fittings honest and the renovations gentle. A 96 seat studio theatre has sat upstairs since 1985, so a play often shares the building with the set below.
The cask program is the reason to come. Ten hand pumps change week to week across British and imported ales, with Westons Old Rosie usually holding the cider line. A pint of the rotating cask runs about 6 pounds, and a sign outside has long claimed the best real ale selection in Chiswick. Londonist files it among the neighbourhood's serious beer rooms, and the range earns the boast more often than not.
The crowd reads local and unhurried, families and beer hunters early, a music crowd after dark. Friday leans on the piano, Saturday brings a band, and the last Thursday of the month opens the mic to whoever signs up. The bills run from jazz to funk to indie, per the pub's own listings.
Piano on Friday, a band on Saturday, an open mic once a month, a minute from the tube.
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