Barnes Thanksgiving Dinner for 20 Years: The Red Lion

The Red Lion, the Fuller's pub at 2 Castelnau on the village crossroads in Barnes, London SW13 9RU, has served a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner for more than 20 years, and it is doing so again on Thursday 26 November 2026. Service runs from 12:30pm to 9pm across a lunchtime sitting and two evening sittings. The pub says Thanksgiving is one of its most popular events of the year and that tables fill quickly, so this is a booking to make in October rather than the week before.

The pub keeps the menu traditional. The centrepiece is roast turkey with all the trimmings, served with traditional cornbread stuffing and green bean casserole, two dishes most British pubs never cook, plus a spread of classic Thanksgiving sides. Dessert is homemade pumpkin pie, which the pub describes as made in true American style, the spiced custard pie that homesick Americans in London find hardest to buy in a shop.

The menu is aimed at American expats, visitors and families as well as Barnes locals who have adopted the date. The pub has not published a Thanksgiving price on its event pages, so ask when you book. Fuller's runs the bar, so a pint of cask ale sits alongside the turkey rather than a cocktail list, and the pub also stocks modern craft beers.

The Red Lion says its Thanksgiving started as a single dinner service and has grown into one of London's most established Thanksgiving events, with lunchtime sittings and two evening dinner sittings. Many guests return year after year. That growth tells you how to book: lunch suits families with small children and retired regulars, while the two evening sittings fill with groups who come after work.

Thursday is a working day in Britain, so the evening sittings go first. If you are flexible, the lunchtime sitting gives the calmest room and leaves the afternoon free for a riverside walk.

The building's story is unusually well documented. The pub was first recorded as a licensed public house in 1718, under the name the Strugglers, on the fringe of the Barn Elms manor estate. Its customers were farmers, market gardeners, ferrymen, carters and seasonal workers. After a fire in 1835 it was rebuilt and renamed the Red Lion, and it carried on quietly as a Georgian village house for decades.

The change came with the rebuilt Hammersmith Bridge in 1887, which made Barnes reachable, and with the Ranelagh Club at Barn Elms, which brought polo players, golfers and spectators from 1884 to 1939. During those boom years Cannon Brewery of Clerkenwell took the pub into its estate and enlarged it into the handsome suburban pub on the corner today. Fuller's now runs it, and the pub says that original spirit endures under its stewardship.

The pub's history page opens with Samuel Pepys, who wrote in his diary on 23 March 1667 of taking a barge from Tower Wharf up to Barn Elms on a fine day, singing all the way. The manor house he visited was damaged by fire and demolished in 1954, but by the mid-18th century the estate covered around 480 acres of gardens, pasture, fishponds and riverbank around the pub.

On a late-November afternoon the best seats are near the real fire, which the pub lists among its features along with a leafy garden at the back. The garden can be booked for private events, though in November it is more likely to be a place for a quick drink than a long lunch. Inside, the large dining space is where Thanksgiving tables are laid.

The Red Lion is dog friendly and welcomes families, with baby changing facilities, a children's menu available until 6pm, step-free access and an accessible toilet. Assistance dogs are welcome and there is accessible parking. The pub also shows live sport, so after the turkey you may find a match on the screens alongside the Thanksgiving crowd.

Drinks follow the pub's usual line-up: cask classics alongside modern craft beers from a well-stocked bar. For a group that wants to toast the holiday, a round of pints by the fire after the pumpkin pie suits the setting better than a cocktail list would, and the bar team can point you to whichever cask is pouring best that week.

The pub sits where Castelnau meets the edge of the old Barn Elms land, and that history still shapes a walk. The London Wetland Centre, which the pub's own history page ties to Barn Elms' long openness, is nearby for a morning of birdwatching before a lunch sitting. The Thames path also runs close by, the same riverside paths the pub says have carried walkers for centuries.

For an evening plan, the Olympic Cinema in Barnes is in the village, the modern successor to the role Byfeld Hall played after it opened in 1906, when audiences spilled out of events and into the Red Lion. Pairing an early Thanksgiving sitting with a film is an easy way to turn the meal into a full evening without leaving the village.

The Red Lion is at 2 Castelnau, Barnes, London SW13 9RU. The pub is open Monday to Saturday from 11am to 11pm and Sunday from 12pm to 10:30pm. Thanksgiving dinner is served on Thursday 26 November 2026 between 12:30pm and 9pm, with lunchtime and two evening sittings, and booking is through the pub's Thanksgiving page.

If you miss out on a Thanksgiving table, the pub is also taking Christmas bookings, and its regular menu of pub classics uses fresh, seasonal ingredients for the whole family. Friends of Fuller's who sign up on the site get seasonal news, event alerts and offers, which is the easiest way to hear when the next year's Thanksgiving booking opens.