The one in Forest Hill is an old cinema. It's interesting inside, though I would have preferred the cinema. The one in South Croydon is an old theatre. I'd have... you get the idea.
Beer, I suppose, is cheap and the selection is better than the average and they're a step above those cooking-lager-and-packet-of-crisps pubs that leave you wishing someone would put them out of their misery (it's behind you, what? a supermarket beer aisle, that's what). I'm not sure I'd go to one on purpose, don't let my avocado-dodging ways fool you, nor the fact that I ate so many fish fingers as a child that I'm now a faintly orange colour like I spent the first sixteen years of my life marinating in Tizer, I'm a snob. I had some food there once or twice, it's the sort of uninspired mass-produced microwave, oven, and deep-fried crap that really only works if you're desperate for calories which I don't think the average Wetherspoons customer is. Thinking about calories, I think think they print the calorie counts for each menu item. Who the fuck wants a menu that tells you that? You're faced with a choice of industrially processed food and what little joy they've not managed to squeeze from it they further sully by telling you just how fat it'll make you. But hey, you could just order some soggy broccoli to go with your tears. I suppose on the plus side they probably don't feel the need tell me about their artisanal ingredients and serve me a burger on a slate (from Cornwall, terroir is so important).
Mind you, their success is a reminder of how crap many pubs got (and still often are). They weren't exactly raising the bar, so to speak. That said, the pubs here in the deep, dark jungles of Surrey are so shit*, I think a Wetherspoons would be welcome.
*Slight lie, there's a decent micropub now that gets in some good stuff on keg, and the landlord was serving some it so cheap I had to tell him to check he wasn't undercharging, everything else seems to be chav-a-geddon.
