Welcome to The Phoenix Tavern and Restaurant from all our team.
A 14th century freehouse with a wealth of oak beams, two inglenook fires and Chesterfield sofas in one of England’s longest and oldest medieval streets, which is Cask Marque approved and in the Good Beer Guide. A wide range of ales, lagers and wines and an extensive menu from the ever popular PHOENIX PICKING POTS through the bar menu to a la Carte.
In the restaurant we treat you as we would a friend coming to dinner at our home, we want you to feel as if you are having supper in a friend’s house. Our menus change often and our wines are carefully selected to complement the food and will themselves change as needed. We are not tied to any single wine supplier and aim to provide an adequate choice without one of those over long wine lists that does little more than confuse! Currently our wines are supplied by the Royal Warrant holders Corney and Barrow.
Throughout the restaurant and the pub we provide quality at a sensible price and therefore value for money and an enjoyable experience.
Our events are as varied as some of them are unusual for a pub, from poetry evenings and debates to quizzes and business networking nights. But we don’t have juke boxes, fruit machines, huge TVs or computer games and don’t sell alcopops!
REGULAR EVENTS AT THE PHOENIX
1st and 3rd Mondays of the month: Quiz Night in aid of a local charity, 7.30pm for 8pm
2nd Monday of the month: The Real Ale Advisory Board, 6.30pm
4th Monday of the month: The Debate, 7.30pm for 8pm
2nd Tuesday of the month: Half-Mast Poetry Society, 8pm
3rd Tuesday of the month: Business Networking, 6.30pm
This splendid building with its oak frame and beams is a medieval hall house dating from about 1330. The hall was in the main bar area and part of one of the jettied ends was in the restaurant. Though not visible from the ground floor, it has an arched tie-beam and two large curved brackets to the posts forming a pointed arch, with a crown post, collar purlin and brackets at either end. The inglenook fireplaces would have been put in much later, in the 1600s, and would have given the residents a vastly improved lifestyle – free of smoke and with better cooking. Whitbread's records show this as a tavern in the early 18th century, and it’s mentioned as a public house called The Phoenix in a deed of sale in 1877. It’s likely that in the early days the beer was brewed on the premises – probably by the lady of the house – as Faversham had some fame in the 1700s for its brewsters (female brewers).
The name Phoenix indicates a fabulous bird from Oriental myth, which lived 500 years, then having burned itself, rose alive from the ashes. Maybe a fire in part of the building inspired this exotic and unusual name.
Opening times
The Phoenix Tavern is open:
Monday and Tuesday, noon to late
Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to late
Sunday, noon to late