Taking a food concept from the streets to proper, grown up, bricks and mortar restaurant phase is gradually becoming a well walked path. Even if it becomes a totally standard way to enter the restaurant industry, I think there’ll always be something endearing about the route and those that are able to take it. It’s just reward for the traders who battle the elements, logistical nightmares and tiny profit margins. A victory for the little man.

Doesn’t stop there though, does it?

What might feel like the end game is really just the start of being involved in a notoriously difficult industry. That must be mighty daunting.

Homeslice are the latest of a growing line of street food traders to step up to the task of taking on a permanent site. A regular trader at Eat Street / KERB, I enjoyed a few slices of pizza from their mobile pizza oven last year. I remember, in particular, one tie-up they did with the Rib Man’s pulled pork and his notorious sauce; an early sign that Homeslice are not afraid to stray from the traditional interpretation of Neapolitan pizza.

They’ve taken down the tent and this month opened as a proper pizza restaurant in the brightly coloured and always bustling Neal’s Yard. It’s a good space – very casual, high ceilinged and light, big tables, relatively bare walls and a smart looking pizza oven tucked in the corner of their open kitchen. As a side note on the aesthetics, I think the only thing that didn’t seem right were the cold congealed looking examples of pizza next to the till. All a bit too Leicester Square for me.

The concept is simple: one slice of pizza costs £4; a whole pizza costs £20; you can get two different toppings on a the £20; and that £20 pizza is massive – i.e. enough for two to share. The drinks options further the casual and social tone that naturally follows pizza (or ought to): beer and prosecco on tap and house wine served in magnums, marked at a level when you start and when you finish. I reckon that’s a nice touch.

Those who are particularly strict with pizza toppings might flinch at the short 8 or so pizza menu. There’s a Margherita (obviously) and cured ham and rocket and so on. But other, less traditional options kind of dominate. Courgette and artichoke; smoked trout, beetroot and goat’s curd; pork belly and chimichurri stood out and (dare I say it) appealed.

The thing is, pizza is one of those simple looking dishes that needs to be absolutely nailed to stand out.

On a first visit I got a single slice to go. The topping was pleasant enough, but the base was underdone and doughy. It felt like the oven wasn’t hot enough. A day and a larger pizza later and I was more impressed, but certainly not blown away. The best pizzas come piping hot, crispy and puffed up at the edge, sloppy in the middle. Our table-sized beast wasn’t quite that. Less doughy than before, but still not perfect.

As mentioned, I quite like the idea of the non-traditional toppings, and a pizza bianco style half topped with courgette and artichoke was particularly good, but maybe needed a touch of salt and more/some basil. Pork belly and chimichurri didn’t quite hit the spot – it was pleasant, but just not enough flavour from any of the components. I’d have enjoyed more splashes of the herby sauce.

On the basis of those visits, if you’re in search of the perfect pizza, then there are better places dotted around London (I continue to favour Santa Maria, the Brixton branch of Franco Manca and the Pizza Pilgrim’s van). However, as somewhere to meet and eat in central London, there are few places that are cheaper and more sociable.

That oven will get hotter and flavours may get bigger. But the real USP of Homeslice seems to me to be the opportunity to get 5-10 people round some massive and inexpensive pizzas, and see how much wine and beer you can balance on the table at the same time. I say cheers to that and good luck to them.

Homeslice in 3 words

Social, massive pizza

The Bill

£4 for 1/6 pizza. £20 for 1 whole. £4 beer / prosecco. House plonk.

www.homeslicepizza.co.uk - 13 Neal’s Yard, WC2H9DP – 02078364604

What makes a euphemism? Is it just anything that sounds a bit wrong? Or do you need malicious intent too? Hmmm.

Well, I’ve been enjoying cooking my lettuce recently. Sometimes quite hard. Sometimes a bit wet. Often when others aren’t around.

I really don’t intend to dissimulate anything by saying that. Put simply, and literally, cooked lettuce is great.

Classically, of course, shreds of lettuce are superb braised à la Française with peas, spring onions and mint. I like chucking some broad beans or asparagus in to Franglicise the dish a bit.

I’ve recently watched long quarters of Romaine be wilted and scorched, to great effect, in a frothing vat of brown butter, then served with rich lamb sweetbreads. Oh oui chef.

However I’m particularly enjoying just browning the inner parts of halved baby gem hearts and pairing them with whatever’s in the fridge or store cupboard (always a bit of cheese, mind).

A lunch of pan fried baby gems showered with grated parmesan was a particular treat when eaten alongside sardines on toast.

And, this evening, similar little gem hearts were cooked quickly in a reasonable amount of butter, topped with a slither of Stawley then placed for a few minutes in a warm oven, so the goat’s cheese just, but only just, started to bend and melt. On the side of a Barnsley chop and paired with a very herby crème fraiche dressing, the cooked lettuce was killer.

I can see this becoming a bit of a habit. There are worse ones, I suppose.

Browned baby gem lettuce and Stawley

Per person as a side – though I’m sure you could eat more

Pre heat your oven to 140C. Put a heavy bottomed frying pan on a medium-high heat. Get a ceramic, cast iron or pyrex baking dish ready.

Slice your lettuce hearts in half lengthways. Trim any brown bits off the end of the core, but be careful not to release any outer leaves when doing so. Add the butter to the pan and let it melt then start to foam. Place the lettuce hearts on the butter, core side down. Cook for 2-3 minutes, until the lettuce is a nice golden brown on the inside, but still relatively fresh on the outside.

Transfer the hearts to the baking dish, this time lying them on their backs. Drizzle any butter from the pan over the hearts and season with a good pinch of salt and pepper. Top with a 2-3mm thick slither of goat’s cheese. Place in the oven for 4 minutes so that the cheese just warms, but before the lettuce wilts to nothing.

I got crabs on my mind.

So here’s a clip of something I wrote for Borough Market.

Click on the link at the end to see the rest of the article, including instructions for killing, cooking and picking a crab. Which is something everyone should do, even if it’s just to appreciate the convenience of buying pre-prepared meat.

“A quick straw poll of the room I’m in concluded that the stall most likely to be looked at in wonder, but rarely bought from, is the fishmonger’s.

That I’m the only person in the room is particularly telling – I’ve spent weeks and weeks scaling, gutting and filleting fish and cracking open seafood, yet still don’t buy enough of the stuff. And of all the things I nearly buy but don’t, the crab is the one I wished I got my wallet out for more often.

The Challenge

I think crabs are a superb example of daunting market ingredients that, actually, everyone should have a go at buying and cooking. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Go along to Furness Fish and Game stall the middle of the Market and see how the crabs sit … and shuffle in the display. This is as fresh as you can get – i.e. alive!
• Right now British crabs are very in season.
• Crabs are easy to cook. Just plop in a stock pot (see finer details below) for about 20 minutes. Et voila.
• They’re also a bit of a fiddle to then get the goods out of. But it’s more time consuming than difficult and, importantly, great challenges come with great rewards; I always think you enjoy and appreciate food most when you’ve worked for it.
• Buying, cooking and picking your own crab, is a great way of understanding the value of the pots of prepared meat on the counter. It’s definitely cheaper and more fun to get a whole crab. But once you’ve done so, you also appreciate that for the prepared pots, some poor soul has had to pick all that lovely meat. Their time and your time is valuable!

Really, you should give it a go. There are few things more satisfying and educational than getting to the end of a battle with a crab and its claws …”

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Borough Market website.

In its new coat of graphite grey, One Leicester Street doesn’t jump around, waving and screaming so as to compete with the nearby cinemas, chain restaurants, sweet shops and ice cream parlours. Rather it sits patiently and discreetly; a becalming haven for those in the know.

This pretty much reflects the food that travels the short distance over the open pass and into the small dining room: subtle, quietly confident, and very welcome.

By way of background, One Leicester Street houses a restaurant, first floor bar and other floor bedrooms on the site that, just a few months ago, was painted white and named the St John Hotel. Or was it St John Chinatown? Dunno. Anyway, sadly, the St John Hotel operation entered into administration in the latter part of 2012 and was rescued / snapped up by Singapore hotelier Loh Lik Peng in the early part of this year.

The misfortunes of the site as it functioned under the St John banner were not, I don’t think, on account of the food. Larger business and legal forces were at work. Indeed, given the restaurant received a Michelin Star in the latest round of dustings, the whole administration thing felt surprising to those of us who aren’t in the know. There was also a surely it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it kinda hunch when the administrators and subsequently the new owners came in.

Happily, the overhaul hasn’t been too dramatic.

Chef Tom Harris remains in the kitchen, now as chef-patron, and most of the kitchen and waiting staff look familiar, save their white uniforms have been replaced by smart blue aprons and stripy shirts. Maybe the most obvious changes are to the room itself, which has been given a similar lick of paint to the outside of the building.

The effect of the change in aesthete is that it is at once more sophisticated and more comfortable than before – it’s strangely warm and cosy, given the grey-scale theme, and is just the right side of formal to suit both pleasure and business. Attractive and colourful illustrations on the various menus add a subtle but effective splash of colour to the room.

The chef hasn’t thrown away his St John grounding overnight. Rightly so. Indeed a few of the old favourites remain – the duck hearts and snails in a lovage sauce (although was there lardo before?) and the crispy puffed pig skins and cod roe. But maybe there has been a tiny loosening of the shackles.

It’s not, like, mental: the menu is still written in typical St John style (three ingredients; limited to no descriptors); you still order from a selection of smallish plates to share; and many components are familiar (razor clams, pig cheek, sweetbreads and goat curd). But on the plate, things feel a tiny bit racier than might have got past Fergus. Jazzed up razor clams. A positively showy monkfish dish. There’s even room for shaved ice (with tea).

Don’t get too excited, mind. The kitchen’s presentation style is still pleasingly restrained and natural. No blobs, smudges or foams and just the occasional crumb.

We started with devilled pigs skin – which mirror the prawn crackers of its Chinatown neighbours – and their light and creamy smoked cods roe condiment. Quality. Crab fennel and monks beard followed shortly after. Fairly generous amounts of chilled, sweet white crab meat, the occasional wave of salty monks beard, atop a thin crouton and a savoury dollop of loosened brown meat. Really nicely balanced, great textures and very enjoyable.

Things warmed up after that. Braised broad beans with wild garlic and grated berkswell came in a bowl with a dark green broth. Minty, sweet green veg, subtle and salty sheep’s milk cheese. It was properly tasty Spring food. Then a hunk of Dexter brisket, blackened on the outside, ruby red within, served with punchy horseradish cream and pickled beetroots. This reminded me of the Dabbous smoked pork dish – though the beef is the knowing adult to the brasher, porky teenager.

I didn’t love the fawn coloured dish of lambs sweet breads, artichokes and celery. Not because of its appearance (actually, it looked great), rather the sweetbreads were fairly small, floured heavily and fried, so they kind of resembled chicken nuggets in taste and texture. I prefer larger, moister, glazed glands.

It was difficult to choose from the five dessert options. In the end, we plumped for and enjoyed a bowl of decadent and creamy vanilla yogurt, yoghurt crumbs, tart blood orange and meringue – though it would have been too sweet for just one of us to get through.

The showstopper, though, was the brown butter and honey tart, which looked so simple and spartan as it arrived sharply cut on a plain white plate, but jumped to the top of my list of desserts eaten in 2013 (or ever) upon first bite.

Ye Gods, flavour wise it was an awesome combination of salty hazelnut beurre noisette and a rounded, malty honey. But the sucker punch was the just-firm texture of the custard. To prod it with a spoon started the most glorious and long lasting wibble that is still gently reverberating in my left love handle as I type. I’ve never seen my Dad cry, but I’d wager he’d shed a tear over this x-rated tart.

Who would have thought that something that looked so plain would have such an impact? But this probably sums the food  up. It’s understated and deceptively polished, delicate, precise without being lightweight or boring, and majors on balance of flavour above all else.

So there you go. I really liked One Leicester Street. It’s kind of same, same but a bit different and (dare I say it) a bit better than its previous guise. It’s refreshingly safe, rather than spectacular and you wouldn’t go there to have a party, I don’t think. But for twos, threes, fours, maybe up to sixes wanting quality food in smart but unpretentious surroundings, this is bang on.

Make sure you have the tart.

One Leicester Street in 3 words

Understated, polished, effective.

The Bill

We paid £50 per head for that food (which was plenty), service (which was nice) and a great bottle of reasonably priced Bulgarian Soli (which was around £25).

www.oneleicesterstreet.com – One Leicester Street, WC2H 7BL – 020 3301 8020

Back in the days when I wore a suit, I developed a bad habit of eating a burrito about twice a week at approximately 19:17, before heading back to my desk for an evening of correcting punctuation.

This was largely because there was a Chilango just across the road, and their often fairly heavily stuffed tortilla wraps were significantly more enticing than whatever Restaurant Associates had prepared in our basement.

There was something just a little bit addictive about the burritos too, though. And whilst I don’t subscribe to the view that a burrito is inherently unhealthy, if your daily routine is fairly sedentary, maybe it shouldn’t be such a regular thing.

I left the job and kicked the habit.

Or so I thought.

Because I’ve recently found myself getting back on the burrito train. Whilst my life is a touch more active, it’s becoming a 12:47 trend now, and that’s not so good. Burritos tend to make me drowsy and I’m probably eating well in the evening too. Neither of these things bode well for the beach.

It was therefore very good to have my head turned away from my current vice (the Chipotle Barbecoa) whilst walking down St Martin’s Lane today. A new fast food takeaway has just opened under the stewardship of the formidable queen of offal and Middle Eastern eating, Anissa Helou. It’s called Koshari Street and is a very simple premise (I imagine there are plans to scale quickly): freshly assembled koshari, an Egyptian streetfood; with a soup option and a few salads and fresh juices in the fridge.

I liked what I saw and ate. The koshari itself is extremely light and well seasoned. I enjoyed the fluffy mix of macaroni, broken vermicelli, lentils and rice, the bite of the chickpeas and the crunch of the caramalised onions and sprinkle of nuts. A dollop of tomato sauce was tangy and thick, but not really as hot as promised.

There was a good deal of press earlier in the year about this and no doubt there will be more. Which might raise expectations a little too highly – this is convenience food, not a revelatory destination dish. I also worry that, on its own, a paper bowl of koshari might be a bit light on the filling and heavy on the wallet.*

That said, the meal deals (koshari with soup and/or salads as a side) seem good value and freshly squeezed juices were spot on.

And, ultimately, a nice, light, fresh, interesting bowl of koshari was, and is, One Good Reason to step away from the burrito.

Where

www.kosharistreet.com - 77a St Martin’s Lane, BC1A 4RT

One Good Reason

A nice, light, bowl of koshari. Have it as part of the meal deal for about £7.50.

*I note the koshari in the picture was just a taster pot. Normal ‘large’ portions are bigger, but not huge and still without meat/fish based protein.

“But he hasn’t got anything on” a little child said.

—

The booking confirmation for Restaurant Story states “Here at Story our dream is for all guests to bring a book to the restaurant and simply leave it behind with the reason why you chose that particular book. This will remain in the restaurant to help share not only our story, but yours too.”

The cynic in me wanted to take a copy of Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales for Children. For there had been something a little too presumptive about the build up to Story’s opening: a “you’ll be lucky to get a seat at this starlet’s table” vibe, which made me wonder whether the young head chef, Tom Sellers, really was fit to be touted as an Emperor, and what his robes were actually made of.

But I didn’t. Because that would have been a bit twatish.

And, as previously mentioned, I eat out to have a good time, so try to avoid arriving with baggage.

In any case, such prejudice would have been misplaced, as we had a perfectly decent dinner: the kitchen has a delicate and precise touch; the food is light and relatively interesting; the room is calm, spacious and generally lovely; and the service pleasant, if maybe confusingly populated by a few too many characters. There’s some attempt at a geographical link with Dickens, but this is far removed from workhouse gruel.

Having said all that, I’m not convinced Story is a classic. Yet.

The room and its chattels really are nice; it’s perfectly poised for corporate and social occasions alike. They’ve clearly dumped loadsa money into what, apparently, was formerly a public convenience festering just south of Tower Bridge. Indeed, you know money has been of little object when bread arrives in bespoke leather ‘slips’, tables are generously spaced, and chairs, staff uniforms, crockery and the fishbowl kitchen are all things of beauty. So far so good.

Snacks arrived at a refreshingly startling pace: droplets of cod roe on crispy cod skins; oyster emulsion in a strip of courgette flower; polenta coated rabbit croquettes. All looked ace. But only the rabbit tasted great. The oyster / flower petal one really flattered to deceive.

From there we chose a six course menu. A ten course is also available.

A single candle was lit and, when the leather bound bread was brought to the table, was introduced as a beef dripping dip. Probably the best bread condiment I’ve had, and certainly the only one that’s made me smile.

The remaining five courses continued at a good speed - I haven’t had as well a paced long form menu as this for quite some time. Burnt Roscoff onions in gin, apple and thyme jus; raw slices of scallop with balls of cucumber, some coated in dill ‘ash’; lamb with wilting salad leaves and sheep yoghurt; rhubarb ‘soda’; and ‘three bears’ porridge’. All smartly presented, minimalist dishes.

But tempo and appearance are nothing without content. And only the tripartite tasters of salty, sweet and just right porridge were particularly moreish, memorable or novel. I liked the onion dish. But neither alliums in a clear jus nor burnt onions feels particularly innovative or technical. The scallop and lamb courses were pretty enough, but ultimately underwhelming. In other restaurants, I can imagine the rhubarb being a very welcome pre-dessert, rather than a listed item on the menu.

Sure, each course was pleasant. But as the meal progressed, I couldn’t help thinking that if you took away the beautiful plates, wild flowers and herbs, there really wasn’t much to the dishes. The menu that I had lacked punch and, whilst the porridge was a climax, the courses before that failed to build up to it. Overall it was a bit too lightweight, too subtle and too tepid. I noticed on the fuller ten course menu that there were three courses between the scallop and the lamb, and I wonder whether one of those instead of the scallop dish would have balanced our shorter menu better.

It’s worth noting that the wine list wasn’t particularly enjoyable – each section starts with a fairly anodyne tale (on the “we tasted this wine on a Tuesday” theme) but, really, the main story is that there are barely a handful of wines under £30, and most rise steeply from £40.

For completeness, I should also note that, like Upstairs at the Ten Bells, the Clove Club and Bubbledog’s Kitchen Table, Sellers and his crew craft a fine Tunnocks style tea cake as a petit four.

Look, it’s incorrect and unfair to liken Story to The Emperor’s New Clothes. There’s talent and will aplenty here. If you go you certainly won’t feel like you’ve had a bad meal – it’s a young but already highly competent restaurant.

But there’s something about this place that demands judgment by the highest standards, and I just didn’t get the impression that it is a ‘game changer’ at the moment. I suspect others might proclaim it to be; but if you’re looking for light, stylised dining with real flavour and impact, I’d head to Dabbous or Texture.

Story has the ingredients to be excellent, however there are a few little (but significant) niggles, which need to be ironed out. Princess and the Pea?

Story in 3 words

Wait for paperback

The Bill

£45 for six courses. The ten course menu is £65. The wine list is a bit spenny.

www.restaurantstory.co.uk - 201, Tooley Street, SE1 2UE – 020 7183 2117

1. Asparagus ✔
2. Crab ✔
3. One Leicester Street ✔
4. Homeslice ✔
5. Notting Hill Kitchen

Did I mention I’m spreading my seeds a little and doing a bit of writing for Borough Market?

A couple of times a month they publish a post by me, on what to do with some of the things you might look at whilst walking round the market, but are too scared to try. That might mean a focus on seasonal ingredients – like quince. Or knobbly hard looking things like Cannon and Cannon’s awesome British charcuterie.

Here’s the intro piece explaining a bit more about what I intend to write about. And here’s my latest one for the canny urban forager on wild garlic.

Keep on eye on the Borough Market Blog for more in the future. I think the next one is on how to cook and pick a crab, and wtf to do with it.

The vast majority of restaurant posts on this site are positive. This is totally counter to my general disposition: in which frowns come more naturally than smiles; cynical grunts outnumber praise at a ratio of 33 to 1; and where others see opportunity, I see risk.

Some clearly relish drafting negative posts – not least, I suspect, because they are easier to write. But I prefer to avoid putting the boot in.

I think there are three reasons for this:

The first is that I don’t eat out to blog. That is, I don’t go anywhere specifically to ‘review’ it. Rather, I eat out to be with friends and to have a good time. It’s my money, my social time, and it’s not in my interest to go somewhere bad; these days there are so many good places to go (both new and established) that it’s easy to avoid a crap meal. If a meal happens to be particularly good or interesting, then I’ll write about it (probably around one third of them). On the very odd occasion I leave with a sour taste, I tend to bite my tongue.

The second is that, despite my natural tendency towards cynicism, I believe in fairness and, perhaps more importantly, have a deep respect for anyone in the hospitality industry and the personal and financial sacrifices they make. That’s particularly true for independent restaurateurs and café owners, but is still an important perspective to have about the people working hard for big companies too. Who are we to condemn someone else’s work? Imagine a chef or waiter from your meal the night before coming to your office and commenting, without qualification, on your efforts. There’s a place for justified criticism, but as my mantra is to write up good and interesting restaurants, that place is, in general, not here.

The third is that I think negativity on paper is overrated. As enjoyable as drafting a damning write-up feels, a few months later, it never seems as witty, intelligent or warranted as it did at the time. Sure, they’re quicker and more fun to write, but that’s mostly because it’s very easy to criticise, and is even easier to go overboard. Unduly negative reviews reflect worse on the writer than the subject – I can think of at least one broadsheet critic whose put downs have the same effect on me as watching the unnecessarily showy reverse sweep of a flat track bully. There’s a misplaced smugness over the perceived wit and intelligence in their reviews, which should really be regarded as professionally embarrassing. Reading such glib articles is like eating a Big Mac: glorious for a bite, then bloated misery and shame for the next three hours.

But, you know, personal rules and ethics are there to be stretched and broken.

I fell into Yazu Sushi a week ago without having undertaken my customary levels of due diligence. There seemed little need as we walked past: this small kaiten-sushi bar appeared to immediately meet our need for relatively quick and casual food in the middle of Mayfair, and happily coincided with an urge for raw fish.

First impressions were that it would at least do the job: a smiling greeting on entry; a full conveyor belt of food; the apparent charm of a one or two man/woman independent operation that so often leads to great meals. But as the minutes ticked by, it became increasingly obvious that the belt was full because no one was taking any sushi. Most of the dishes, each with two pieces of sushi or a small salad on, were at the very upper end of the coloured plate scale (their plates were graded £1.60; £2.20; 2.80; 3.40; £4). The vast majority of them didn’t look worth the cost. It seemed other guests were there on a discount voucher, yet they weren’t exactly diving in.

Best of the bunch were some standard salmon avocado and spicy tuna handrolls, which we ordered whilst hoping something going round might take our fancy. The fish in these was fine, as was the construction of them. But nothing more than that. Looking at the menu online now, I hardly recognise any of the items actually on offer. There’s certainly no mention of the grim sweet chilli sauce dabbed in some of the rolls, the copious levels of mayo in others, or of the tinned tuna mayo rolls that kept on going round and round and round like a Dolphin’s worst nightmare. Salmon nigiri, that base staple of Western sushi bars, were measly and devoid of flavour.

I think we had eight plates of sushi – so 7 miserly pieces of sushi each, given two of the plates held individual temaki. We filled the hunger gap with mountains of the pickled ginger condiment, rather than order more.

And I would have left it at that. I had written the meal off as a bad debt by about plate two and would happily never have thought of it again. I certainly had no intention of noting anything online. Not the sub-standard sushi. Not the poor value. Not the awful metal chopsicks. Not the repeated drift of the chef to his laptop as his plates circled for the nth time, tempting no one, not even the Woucher and Groupon vultures. But then we were presented with a bill, which included but did not openly disclose a service charge of 20%. Twenty per cent. Pah.

These sorts of pieces usually finish with the kind of patronising advice to the restaurant that only someone without an MBA, without professional experience in the relevant cuisine, but with the unfounded belief that they can write a bit can give. So here’s mine: be more generous, stick to plain sushi, and drop your pricing and your stupid ‘service’ charge to more appropriate levels – your volumes, spend per head, percentage of returning customers and ultimately profit will increase. Everyone will be happier. And you won’t need to buy nearly so much ginger.

Yazu Sushi in 3 words

Not very good

The Bill

£17 per person for bugger all. Includes 20% service charge.

www.yazusushi.co.uk - 46 Curzon St, W1J 7UH – 020 7491 3777

I make no apologies that my One Good Reason feature is rapidly becoming a there are loads of reasons to go to [x], but a particularly good one is [y] thing; I pre-empted that in the first post.

No surprises, then, that the latter statement rings true for this post too – there really are loads of good reasons to drink or eat or drink and eat in the Drapers Arms. Not least great food, great beer, great wine, great service, and a great atmosphere. Happy days.

What I am singling out, though, is Sunday lunch.

Of course these days there are a fair few places cooking decent food on a Sunday. But there is still a lot of dross out there. Which is so disappointing. Importantly, the Drapers Arms not only nails the food every time, it also gets the homely thing bang on too (save for the arguments over the washing up). And if knowing as soon you walk in the door of a pub that your Sunday lunch with friends and / or family will be plentiful, delicious, communal, warming and fun isn’t One Good Reason to eat out on the day of rest, then I don’t know what is.

It is always mighty busy there, yet each table is its own contented and chatty island. That’s a sign of food, situation and service coming together nicely; which is easier said than done.

The changing menu never fails to be varied and tempting, but it is surely the roasts to share that create the particularly happy and unified vibe. Foreribs of beef for 2/3 always draw gasps and envious glances, as do whole chickens and massive pies. I’m rather partial to their shoulder of Elwy lamb, though – good for groups of 5/6. With all the trimmings, of course.

Where

www.thedrapersarms.com – 44 Barnsbury St, N1 1ER – 020 7619 0348

What

Sundays. Best to book in advance.