The Elephant Inn, North Finchley

This pub is owned by Fuller's, so immediately you're going to be drawing premature conclusions and questioning it's authenticity as a proper boozer.

This pub had been given the nod courtesy of a recommendation from our pub chums Match Pint and so on an otherwise uneventful Friday we went to catch some Championship football action. The pub itself wasn't hugely packed, but being in North FInchley you're a bit off the beaten track, plus there's a Wetherspoon's on Tally Ho corner.

There's a very good space on the ground floor and a Thai dining area upstairs. Interestingly they also cater for dog owners as I noticed a jar of dog biscuits in the same place you used to find a jar of pickled eggs.

There's nothing really hugely wrong with this place, but given it's owned by a chain it doesn't have a huge amount of character that would ultimately drive some people away whilst really appeal to others. No, they're taking their penalty right down the middle to try and appeal to the masses.

We met a man in the toilet, it was rather odd for him to introduce himself in such a setting, extending a piss stained hand and introducing himself as a man who was in the diamond business and ran his own jewellers. Interestingly he had an irrational hatred of the mandatory requirement to offer his staff a pension and felt he shouldn't need to offer his employees a future if they offer him long term commitment.

There's only one other time I've been to this pub and that was recently to watch the Joshua v Klitschko fight, on that occasion it was so densely packed I ordered my beer from upstairs and every time the crowd cheered at the television in the corner, the collective open mouth screaming emitting an invisible cloud of bad breath.

Thanks for the recommendation Match Pint, but we expected more as a recommendation than a Fuller's.

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