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LONDON PUBS
Order, order:
Lunch at the Harwood
Arms (right) where
dishes might include
Yorkshire grouse ( below)
Not what you expect?: The exterior of the Harwood
Arms gives no inkling of what you’ll find inside
heart of the nation’s social life so we are pressing
for the government to bring forward more supportive
policies for pubs.”
The BBPA says the tax levied on beer has risen
42% since March 2008, and red tape and regulations
are strangling pubs. Yet in one respect pubs
are thriving. As the 2013 Good Pub Guide reports,
more and more people now choose pubs over
restaurants as dining venues. “Forty years ago
you would be lucky to find a sandwich in a pub,”
Williams says. “Today, pubs are the most popular
places to eat out, selling more meals than all of
Britain’s restaurants combined.”
Decades ago, when pubs first started to serve
meals, everything seemed to come in a basket.
Chicken in a basket. Scampi in a basket. They
would have put soup in a basket if it was thick
enough. The basket added to the novelty of eating
in a pub and helped disguise the likelihood of your
meal being factory-made and microwave-heated.
Nowadays you not only get a plate, but the food on
it is better than ever.
So it is that on an overcast Tuesday afternoon
we’re walking through the quiet, largely residential
streets of Fulham in west London, headed to
the Harwood Arms, a stout building the color of
uncooked liver. From the outside it looks like a
traditional working-class London pub. Someone’s
hung their laundry out to dry in an upstairs
window. Step inside though and you find a bright
and airy dining room, with stripped floorboards,
wooden tables and arty black-and-white photographs
of a pheasant hunt on the walls. It’s the
sort of place where the butter comes on a square
of slate and the cutlery is wrapped in a white cloth
napkin tied with brown string. When you go to the
bathroom they refold that napkin for you.
The Harwood Arms has entered an elite club:
it’s one of 13 pubs in Britain to have earned a
Michelin star – and the only one in London. A
friendly Canadian waitress comes over to take our
Just peachy:
Raspberry sorbet
with poached peach,
lemon thyme and
salted almonds
54 DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 SCANORAMA
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