The great British pub is alive and well, and wowing critics and locals alike with proper good food
For more than 150 years the Pelican has sat on the corner of Notting Hill's All Saints Road. It's had mixed fortunes during that time, but when restaurateur James Gummer, co-owners Phil Winser and Richard Squire, and head chef Owen Kenworthy took over the pub, they were determined to restore it to greatness, as a bastion of the great British pub.
Gummer, who also owns 7 Saints restaurant on the same road, says: "We wanted to go back to what a pub was really about. Pubs were the English form of hospitality. The Italians have their trattorias, the French have their brasseries and the English have their pubs, but we've just let them slip massively."
For the Pelican team, the pub must be part of the community, a place for friends to meet and events to be held, as well as a bolthole for whoever needs it whenever they come knocking. So they're looking to recruit a big enough team to open all day, seven days a week, serving drinks and traditional British fare, with next to nothing sourced from outside the UK.
Kenworthy, previously head chef of Brawn in Hackney, has created bar and restaurant menus that are already attracting rave reviews. He says: "We had lots of discussions about the great British pub and the food served in it. It's a big challenge to use only British. It's really forced us to think.
"The word seasonality gets flung about, as well as sustainability, but we really are cooking entirely seasonally because we only use British produce. That is helping us write the menus because it's just what's available."
The team is working closely with small-scale suppliers, particularly those using regenerative farming methods, and have gone back to basics to ensure nothing is wasted.
"Back in the day, you didn't go into a pub and have a fillet steak," Kenworthy explains. "You'd have a pie or braised liver. They used all those different parts of the animal.
"We've been getting this pasture-fed beef from the Cotswolds and we take the prime cuts for the restaurant and do other things with the other parts of the animal. One of them is mince on toast – you take those other parts, mince them down and turn that into a great dish that's probably been on pub menus since the 1500s or something, until people started putting burrata and burgers on."
The mince on toast (£11) is one of the Pelican's most talked-about dishes. "[It's an] old-school, hearty mince, the way my mum used to do it," Kenworthy says. "Lots of onions, get lots of colour on those, get the mince in, lots of colour on that, a little bit of tomato, loads of red wine which comes down and acts as the braise, then lots of garlic, beef stock, and that gets brought down so it's nice and meaty and hearty, but really humble." The mince is simply piled on a slice of chargrilled, homemade sourdough with a grating of cheese over the top (currently an Irish Gouda).
Offcuts and offal have also found their way into a ‘fifth quarter pie'. Liver, lungs, kidneys, oxtail, ox cheeks and more go in to create a delicious "proper" pie. "For me, a pie is not a pie unless it's full pastry," the chef explains. "That excitement that precedes expectation when it arrives – that's what I always try to bring to the pub environment."
Since the Pelican reopened its doors at the start of the year, its lobster and monkfish pie served with a lobster head gravy (£60 for two) has been proving particularly popular.
The lobster is poached, with the head sidelined to make a gravy. The tail, claws and feet are broken down for the pie, and the shells used to make a "lovely, rich, lobster sauce". The lobster meat is mixed into that sauce along with the monkfish, which the chef says suits the pie because it's substantial enough to hold up to longer cooking. The mix is placed in a hot water pastry base before a lattice pastry is added to the top.
Gummer says: "I think it's a really cool nod to a pub that the lobster and monkfish pie comes in a pastry case, is served on a board, and you tuck in yourself. It's amazing."
Desserts follow tradition with a strawberry trifle as well as parkin and custard enjoying top billing with customers. Kenworthy says: "People love the trifle. It was my mum's go-to. I think these days people overthink things like the trifle. Go back to traditional sponge, jelly, nice custard, bit of cream, hundreds and thousands – what more do you need in life? And the parkin is just a great thing. We don't mess about with it; it's an old recipe and we serve it with some lovely custard."
The Pelican is making waves as a dining destination but it's also already firmly rooted in its community. Kenworthy adds: "A pub is great food, great beer, friendly smiles and that sense of a space you know you can go to and relax and enjoy yourself. The British pub's there for you, and we're here for them."
45 All Saints Road, London W11 1HE
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