Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, 98 Finchley Road

Only in London could you find a pub built in the style of a Swiss chalet sitting on a piece of land that amounts to a large traffic island cut off from the rest of London by the A41. This is one of the few areas of London that has actually been named after a pub. The pub dates back to around 1826 when it was built at the junction of the newly constructed Finchley New Road and Avenue Road. Back then it was called the Swiss Tavern but it was eventually changed to its current name and the area that sprung up around it became known as Swiss Cottage. The pub lies next to the tube station so finding the place couldn’t be easier. Once inside we immediately felt that the place did not deserve the harsh reviews it had received on some other pub review websites. Though traditionally decorated, it certainly wasn’t dingy and it did not smell (not even in the gents). Being a Sam Smiths pub, the booze is cheaper than the average and in addition to the regulars this tends to attract the usual types: pensioners by day and students by night. We arrived early evening so we saw a drunken old man sitting at one end of the bar and plenty of students. The staff were polite and there was none of the surliness that I had been warned about. All in all not a bad place to kick off a pub crawl along the Finchley Road

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