There is a pub called The Devonshire, I doubt you’ve heard of it. It just sits quietly in Soho prime estate, yards away from Piccadilly station, pouring millions of pints of Guinness to those who fill the inside and spill onto the streets outside. It’s a handsome building, angular and astute, with the green frontage bearing the name of London’s most famous landlord and his partner who owns a small group of impeccable steak restaurants. In the kitchen is the man who got The Fat Duck through their glory years before doing the same at Dinner by Heston. It’s all very thought out. All very polished. They have pedigree. So much pedigree that Crufts have given them a special recognition award. So much pedigree that Triple H has filed for copyright. You’d expect with this level of pedigree that every restaurant critic in the country would be all over it. That it would fly into second place of Top 50 Gastropubs and win best value menu at The Good Food Guide Awards. You’d expect to see it mentioned on Topjaw every day with the top jawline himself waxing lyrical about how much he likes to go. But no, I’ve seen nothing, zero, nada, zilch about it.
It was rammed inside, alway is. I think I’ve been there once when it wasn’t when it involved checking out of Cafe Royal at 11am on the dot and having a Guiness whilst my mate was still in the spa. The two flights of dining room looking all colonial like the room in Bentleys but with better art, and a similar mix of the well-heeled and the curious. Next to us is a man enjoying a very good bottle of Bordeaux to himself that I’m close enough to almost taste, whilst we tuck into something far cheaper from Rioja. There is bread, properly fluffy bread, with enough butter to smear two inches thick. That is the right amount of butter.
They have a set menu, I doubt you’ve heard of it given it absolutely did not win best value menu at the Good Food Guide Awards. I was there (it’s the reason why we are in London), and I would have absolutely remembered if they had. It’s two courses for twenty-five, three for twenty-nine, with the choices being prawn cocktail for starters, skirt steak for mains, and sticky toffee pudding. Don’t like that value? You can eat a la carte as I did where starters start from eight quid and mains nineteen quid, and even if you went full-on-fancy-pants would struggle to hit £60 for three courses. The prawn cocktail is superb, choc-a-block with them bound in a proper marie-rose sauce whilst a langoustine looks dead-eye with the same sadness as My Octopus Diaries. Equally superb is my starter of crab with bitter leaves, generous and sympathetic with the white crab meat that works off the anise of tarragon and crisp sweetness of apple. The recipe is in The Times. I’m recreating it for Valentine’s Day.
The steak on the set menu is also something to cherish. The meat is deep purple in colour; charred, almost glossy on the outside, rare as you like in the middle. It is, without question, a great steak, as are the more premium cuts as confirmed by the man now half-way through his fancy Bordeaux. It comes with chips fried in duck fat and a bernaise that is almost perfect save for a lick of vinegar too much. I got the beef cheek and Guinness suet pudding because Aktar said I should order it. As an aside, and something that still makes me inwardly laugh, I ask the lovely guy who is serving us if I need to order a side. He tells me with the straightest face that it “comes with a few veg”, by which he means that there is a third of a carrot dice within the mix. And truth is, I don’t think I’d order it again. There is bone marrow, so much marrow that along with the suet, the Guiness, the braised beef, and the third of a carrot, I find too rich for this delicate little flower from Birmingham. It needed acidity, some freshness, and the mashed potato I ordered didn’t have that no matter how good it was.
Fortunately we save the best for last, sharing the sticky toffee pudding at the end. That sticky toffee pudding, Christ alive. That sticky toffee pudding, take me now. That sticky toffee pudding, put me in a vat of that butterscotch sauce once it’s cooled to a safe enough temperature to bathe in and leave me alone for an hour. I have no idea how they got the cake so light. No idea how to make a sauce that perfect. Sometimes you eat first and think second. I’m just happy that me, Sophie, and the man with the empty bottle of Bordeaux were able to have that moment together.
The bill was £170 for two, and I’m conscious that I’m saying that its value is a bit prickish right now, but I’ll prick away and say that it is because it was. I am also equally conscious that last year I did more perfect tens than The Beautiful South and that needs to stop. When I started to write this I did so with a nine in mind; be a bit Sitwell and say something edgy that doesn’t involve slagging off the vegans. And yet the reality is that The Devonshire wears the mantle of second best pub in the UK whilst being the best pub in the UK. I can’t blame the one dish that I didn’t love on anyone other than the person who ordered it, and that’s me. Actually, I can. Let’s blame Aktar, the bastard.
10/10
