My ancient local pub is now a Browns Brasserie – I wish they had left it alone

Telegraph

07-05-2025

It's 25 years this month since I first visited The Cherry Tree in Southgate, north London.
In May 2000, my wife and I viewed a number of nearby houses and we headed there afterwards for drinks while we discussed what we'd just seen. Discussions were fruitful: we settled on one, an Edwardian terrace in nearby Palmers Green. We lived there for 17 years before relocating even closer to The Cherry Tree which, as a result, for the last eight years has been my local.
So I've had drinks at this pub dozens, if not hundreds, of times over the last quarter century. But earlier this year the place shut down, one of the hundreds of pubs to face this fate lately – as I wrote about here.
However, unlike other closures which have seen pubs converted into flats, or branches of Tesco Extra or Paddy Power, The Cherry Tree has a second life as a public 'leisure space'. It was to be converted into a brasserie, a new branch of the chain Browns, owned by the big player brewery Mitchells & Butlers.
After several weeks under scaffolding, it reopened a few weeks ago. So I went back to see how it had changed.
Twee teal, plastic flowers and generic wall art
The Cherry Tree is – or was – an old coaching inn, dating from 1695, on one of the historic routes from London to York. It was reputedly named after the orchards that then surrounded the site.
It has a fine brick facade and still retains its old arch leading to the stable yard to the rear, though lately instead of catering to tired horses the stalls have been converted into a Travelodge for tired business people.
That brickwork has been nicely repointed but the building's front has lost any acknowledgement of its previous life. The signage here simply reads Browns, though there is a smaller sign around the corner that qualifies that it is formally 'Browns at Ye Olde Cherry Tree'.
This is an indicator of what is to come inside: they've swept away almost all its essential pubbiness so it now feels more like a provincial hotel than an old inn.
Instead of a working hearth, the inglenook fireplace now holds a lantern. There's a baby grand piano – but no one playing it. Books on the wall appear to have been bought by the yard for the harmonious colour of their spines. These things appear to be decorative rather than functional.
Instead of wooden chairs everything is now upholstered – in twee teal. There are those hip-10-years-ago filament light bulbs dotted around. The wall art is generic rather than locality-specific: black and white photographs of swans swimming, canal scenes or Big Ben. The pictures have nothing to do with the quiet charms of Southgate which, with its copious spring cherry blossom, I always insist to outsiders is the Kyoto of the London suburbs (even if they often disbelieve me).
There is even a snooty sign by the entrance warning: 'Please be aware we enforce a smart casual dress code.' The column it is attached to is entwined in garlands of plastic flowers.
The bar has survived but it's no longer the province of punters who instead are shown to their table and fetched their drinks by servers with trays. The handful of stools around it are empty. And there's no chance of a decent cask ale or even an interesting bottle: it's all Doom Bar and prosecco.
Jammy daiquiris and pricey mains
That word 'brasserie' had led me to expect food that was mock French, in the vein of the Café Rouge that was next door for many years before it finally closed too. Instead the menu is inexplicably Seventies-evoking surf'n'turf. But if the menu says Seventies, the ambience feels more Eighties: there's the constant irritating low hum of what I think of as 'wine bar music', smooth jazz and soul.
To be fair to Browns, what follows when we eat isn't as bad as I am braced for: the rib-eye is faultless, simultaneously both charry and rare; the lobster, to my surprise, doesn't have that rubbery cooked-before-being-frozen note that's so grim and redolent of Christmas loss leaders at Aldi. And the staff are all lovely.
But there are wrong notes, quite a few wrong notes: a cocktail, supposedly a strawberry daiquiri, is so jammy with so little zing that it feels like it has been poured from a can, and inexplicably comes with an orange slice which has been dried as if for potpourri; a glass of rosé comes at room temperature; a mixed seafood platter is all squid and no scallop, padded out with padron peppers.
Overall though, it's honestly not bad. But neither is it good. It's simply just about OK and instantly forgettable. And it's not cheap: mains start at £23 and go up a good deal from there. Although we don't have desserts, we still leave £150 lighter.
It was fairly busy the night we went and, I gather, has remained so. Friends report seeing the actress Emily Atack there the other day – a bit of sparkle.
But I can't imagine I will ever eat there again.
Diehard locals
As we leave, we go through the beer garden. It's a warm evening and there are a couple of dozen people out here drinking pints rather than prosecco, diehards. I chat briefly to one who tells me that he and his friends are still bent on treating it as their local: 'It's still The Cherry Tree really,' he says. 'It will always be The Cherry Tree.'
But I'm not sure I can agree with him. It feels to me like The Cherry Tree is no more.
Mitchells & Butlers are by no means the worst of the big breweries. My son has worked for them (in The Bear and Staff on Charing Cross Road) for the past year and they have by all accounts been good employers.
But it's fair to say they haven't enjoyed the best of times lately. It was at their Toby Inn just a few miles north of The Cherry Tree that some bright spark last month decided to chop down one of London's oldest oak trees, resulting in the single biggest national arboreal disaster since the Sycamore Gap scandal – and a colossal amount of reputational damage for Mitchells & Butlers.
The woods behind that tree were a regular dog walking spot for me and I knew the now destroyed oak well.
The damage inflicted on The Cherry Tree hasn't been quite as brutal, but I still wish they had left it well alone.
There is an old sailors's tradition that it's bad luck for new owners to change the name of a boat. I have often wondered if the same applies to the rebranding of pubs. Certainly Browns at Ye Olde Cherry Tree is going to need all the good fortune going to last another 330 years, as its predecessor had.
I'm not sure I can see it being here in five.