An elegant, old-school boozer with a restaurant on a corner just off Piccadilly has garnered such hectic attention over the past 12 months (its anniversary is on Bonfire Night next week) that it’s quite hard to remember that this is just a pub. Yes, just a pub with Guinness, steak and chips, and sticky toffee pudding, rather than a magical, celeb-sprinkled fairy tale kingdom where the likes of Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi have been known to lead the nightly singing session in the back room, while Nigella and Margot Robbie tuck into chocolate mousse upstairs.
In a short space of time, the Devonshire has already won several awards, been splashed across a thousand YouTube and TikTok channels, and caused foodies from all over Europe, Japan and North America to wage war over every spare table, which are as rare as hen’s teeth. This is the number one place that friends tap me up for about tips on getting a table. Try midweek, I say, late, late afternoon – and pray that a Beckham or Jon Bon Jovi doesn’t want your spot.
But it’s the very fact that the Devonshire is indeed just a pub – albeit one that aims to do everything very well – that is the crux of its ongoing appeal. Landlord Oisín Rogers, Charlie Carroll, founder of the Flat Iron chain, and chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, ex of the Fat Duck and Dinner, are not reinventing the art of hostelry; instead, they’re leaning heavily on a yesteryear type of fun that wraps around punters like a comfort blanket. This is a pub that bakes its own sweet, plump bread rolls with glossy, salty tops and dispenses them around the tables before dinner. It’s a pub with its own butcher, so the lamb cutlets and ribeyes are guaranteed to be of fine quality. It’s a pub with a private room for lock-ins and muso gatherings, where filming on phones is banned, so you can literally have fun here as if no one’s making “content”, a bit as you could in the 1990s. There are boho shades of Soho’s the Colony Room in the modern-art-bedecked walls, while the dark main bar echoes the Coach & Horses on Greek Street; there’s also a touch of the 1980s Groucho Club in the all-round ebullient mood, plus a large scoop of 1970s Kilburn in the often impromptu live Irish music. That said, the main bar is usually so packed with testosterone-fuelled, braying men in gilets, all necking Guinness like there’s no tomorrow, that you may not wish to linger there long, or even at all.
For too long, London’s pubs have let down tourists with terrible pints, microwaved “traditional fish and chips” and a general lack of warmth. The world flocks to Soho looking for the British pub experience they’ve seen on TV, but instead what they get is a warm bottle of Rekorderlig blackcurrant in a prime bag-snatching spot off Shaftesbury Avenue, so they retreat to the All Bar One on Leicester Square. At the Devonshire, however, you can pop in for just a Guinness, or head to the grill room upstairs to feast on fat scallops with bacon doused with malt vinegar, or a whopping beef cheek suet pudding with a side of duck-fat chips (the grill itself at the far end of the room will definitely banish any winter chills).
The menu is intentionally straightforward: there’s pea and ham soup, white crabmeat salad, lobster, langoustines and ribeye with a choice of sauces. On my last visit on a recent heaving Tuesday lunchtime, I had two of those glossy rolls smeared in salty butter, followed by the prawn and crayfish cocktail, which comes in a sundae glass brimming with marie-rose sauce and bedecked with a fearsome, shell-on crayfish that seems to watch you as you dine. Those big, buttery scallops are some of the best in London, and I’m also a fan of the smoked salmon, though that’s maybe because it’s served with just-baked soda bread.
The vegetarian option that day was a seasonal pumpkin risotto, and there was halibut fillet for the pescatarians, but I was with Charles, and he was determined to try the glorious beef chop, cooked medium-rare and sold in portions that began at 600g. It was a day for sides of pommes puree and creamed leeks, which our neighbouring table thought might contain reblochon – this is a convivial kind of place, and people tend to chat.
Lunch was the epitome of comfort food: hearty, buttery, and with peppercorn sauces and plates mopped with warm bread. The sticky toffee pudding, by the way, is actually rather refined – delicate and not claggy or overpowering – but the chocolate mousse is its evil little sister: rich, decadent and liable to put you to sleep by 3pm. The Devonshire didn’t invent letting your hair down in Soho – that’s been going on for centuries – but that fine tradition is at least being encouraged, protected and upheld.
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The Devonshire 17 Denman Street, London W1 (no phone). Open all week, noon-10pm. From about £40 a head for three courses à la carte; set menu £25 for two courses, £29 for three, all plus drinks and service
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The next episode of Grace’s Comfort Eating podcast is out on Tuesday 29 October – listen to it here