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LONDON PUBS
House and garden:
Lunch on the terrace at
the Sir Charles Napier
(right) can begin with
champagne on the lawn
( below) and a scallop
starter ( far right)
talk (or not) and perhaps play darts. If they were
hungry they might have some salt-and-vinegar
potato chips, a pickled egg or a bag of pork scratchings
– chewy nuggets of pork rind that often still
had pig hairs attached. Sophisticated it was not.
Growing up in a small village in Yorkshire in
northern England in the 1970s, I saw the twilight
days of that world. Sometimes my brother
and I would sneak into the local pub, the Fox and
Hounds, to buy a packet of potato chips with our
allowance. It was a dark and dingy place of sticky
surfaces, beer-soaked carpets and stale tobacco.
Edgar the landlord, cigarette stuck to his lower
lip, would take our money, hand over the chips
and then yell at us to get out.
How times change. That same pub in Yorkshire
is now smoke-free and has things never seen in
Edgar’s day: cutlery, napkins, pinot noir, children.
Some changes, such as the smoking ban, have
been forced on pubs but other changes are voluntary.
Landlords have become increasingly aware
that warm beer, a vinegary egg and a game of darts
are no longer enough to entice people from the
comfort of their homes. After all, you can buy beer
more cheaply at the supermarket. So pubs have
started to offer something you can’t always get at
home – great food.
THE PUB WIDELY CREDITED with being the first to offer
top-notch food stands on a drab street in Clerkenwell,
East London, one of those areas that no one
seemed to go to until it became wildly fashionable
a few years ago. During the week, when the people
who work here are at their desks, the streets
are fairly quiet but at the weekend it’s like one
of those films in which a zombie virus has wiped
out all the Londoners. The Eagle landed here in
1991, opposite a multistory parking lot, but no one
comes here for the view. They come for the food
and the atmosphere, and this Sunday lunchtime
both are in fine form.
A group of old men occupies the green Chesterfield
sofas, a young couple with a baby sit at
the next table, and a young lad, presumably a relative
of one of the employees, is perched at the bar
drinking a Coca-Cola and reading the cartoons in
the Sunday paper. Behind the bar a pair of boisterous
Italian chefs work in a space not much larger
than the galley of a small yacht. Plumes of flame
regularly shoot up from the hob as they prepare
and plate up grilled sardines, orecchiette, Greekstyle
lamb, tapas, squid, chorizo... The menu, like
the staff, is European with English influences.
I order a pint and browse the menu, written on
a chalkboard behind the bar, deciding on Yorkshire
lamb that’s been roasted for seven hours
($20). Bobo chooses a steak sandwich ($15). The
lamb is so tender it falls apart if you look at it
sharply; the sandwich is huge. The food is served
on mismatched plates with mismatched cutlery.
The only thing that’s consistent, judging from the
faces around me, is that everything is delicious.
58 DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 SCANORAMA