London is both beautiful and interesting with pockets of difference in every corner. It’s the only place in the UK that I have been where you can walk from one street to another and find a completely different type of living; city street to countryside in seconds and for that is one reason why London is so awesome!

There are many places I love to visit and south of the river, although not often on my list as so far away from my East London hub, has some special areas for me too. One of those is Kew. I love stepping off the tube to a village feel with flowers and tea shops combining quickly with what still look like Victorian streets. Properties of great proportion with big driveways (by London standards) still in tact as houses rather than flats and with wide roads lined by huge trees it’s just a very unique feel. And as you get to the top of the street directly from the station, there you will find the famous gardens.

Kew gardens is a lovely way to spend time while watching aeroplanes flying so low you almost duck and also a very pleasant jaunt to take with children for after the stuffy long tube journey is a sense of freedom that makes even Mummy want to run over the lawn with her arms out wide, stopping only to smell petals and see the wildlife.

Really my only reason in the past to make the journey over to Kew was indeed to visit the gardens but yesterday I found another reason to take the trip! Instead of walking straight through the Kew Gardens gate, yesterday I turned right and walked for ten more minutes before coming to Kew Green and my destination, The Botanist.

The Botanist on Kew Green!

I love a pub lunch, who doesn’t? And this pub, which has just had a recent make-over, looks like a country pub at that; with the green opposite and lush surroundings it feels like one too! Gorgeously floral on the outside and intimate (although large) and friendly inside with wooden floors and a sumptuous decor! I love all the jars of snacking nuts and the offer of home-made lemonades on black boards across the bar. Lovely wall hangings kept Jimmy entertained and then a cute courtyard bathed in sunlight. It was one of our rare sunny days yesterday!

We were there for lunch with the children and what a place to go with little ones it is! Lots of comfy leather tub chairs and stools mixed with big wooden tables and matching seats are very inviting and with a menu as exciting as the the pub looks we knew we were in for a treat. The children’s menu is £6 which actually isn’t too bad and the main menu is rather reasonable too with starters at around the £5.50 mark and mains averaging at £12. But first I had to try some of that lemonade! Raspberry and mint was my favourite but the strawberry and basil, also good, slipped down nicely and in good preparation for the large glass of delcious Pinot which followed!

Watered and waiting to be fed!

The food was absolutely faultless. Not just ‘good pub food’ but ‘GREAT pub grub’ and definitely something to be re-visited when at Kew! The children’s food came out with our starters and they got tucked into their generous portions of macaroni cheese with garlic bread and sausages and mash with gusto! They could have chosen hand battered fish fingers with mushy peas and chips and all manner of other mouth watering sounding dishes but they knew what they wanted and I think were very pleased with their decision! To finish they had large bowls of the most tasty vanilla ice cream I have ever tried and based on my mouthful of theirs my own desert decision was made!

The sausages were super yummy while the mac and cheese had me hankering after a few mouthfuls myself! Huge portions by my children’s standards and they struggled to finish which is when I swooped and took my own tasters! Just for research purposes of course!

Then it was eyes down for the pudding and my two, along with The littlest Family Four Fun tribe member were thrilled with their sweet treat!

My food was a delight with light and crispy salt and pepper squid and a lime mayonnaise, a pork and chorizo burger and finished off with sticky toffee pudding, chosen almost purely on the basis that it came with that scrummy ice cream! I loved the squid which wasn’t in the slightest bit greasy and my burger, which I had deliberated over for some time trying to decide if beef or pork was the way to go, was stunning!

It wasn’t at all as I expected as I had imagined the chorizo would be in slices on top like cheese (which I added to my order incidentally) but infact was in the main ingredients of the tasty and juicy burger! I don’t know what else was in it but it was totally moreish! It was perfect with the brioche bun and the fries were skin on, home made and slightly salty! Perfect. I wasn’t keen on the side ‘relish’ which to me tasted like a regular thousand island dressing but the ‘jam’ inside the burger was extremely tasty. I’d have preferred an extra bowl of that to dip my chips I think! The sticky toffee pudding, perfect in it’s falling apart crumble at the mouth was full with unctious currents and that ice cream complimented it beautifully! A HUGE portion which I shouldn’t really (and didn’t need to) have finished but I couldn’t help myself so delicious was it!

It really was a lovely lunch with fine food, great drinks, lots of attention to every detail and a friendly, warm welcome for the children! Very inviting! This is the sort of pub which pre children we would have visited for a slightly hung over breakfast on the weekend (brunch is new to their menu and sounds awesome) and if it was closer I could see us popping regularly too for Sunday lunch now! For me it would be Mummy lunches in the week and the occasional Mummy and Daddy night out for us! Nothing to fault here in the slightest aside from the fact it’s not my side of London – still, we know where it is for when we’re there!

It was yummy food and luckily I had great company too! It was fab to meet new bloggers and website runners as well as catch up with my old mucker Emily from Family Four Fun! Thanks The Botanist for a gorgeous lunch which the children enjoyed as much as I!

We were treated to lunch in return for an honest review.