The Times
Charlotte Ivers enjoyed a long lunch at a new venue describing itself as a ‘neighbourhood pub’, although she quickly established that “this is a lie”.
“The first thing you see on entry is a counter of fresh fish on ice. Pubs, let me be clear, do not display fish on ice. They do not have white table cloths and smartly dressed waiters. They do not — and I cannot stress this enough — offer six caviar options. In my experience, most pubs barely do two.”
Once happy that this was in fact a restaurant, Charlotte conceded that “the food is good” – if very pricey, given that anywhere this close to Sloane Square charges what she called the “West London tax”. Which meant she and two dining companions shared (among other dishes) a lone £10 devilled egg and a single £25 carabinero prawn – “only a bite each when shelled”. Her top bite was the “gorgeous” turbot dripping potatoes: “a weird idea but it works, a comforting childhood hash brown made luxurious.”
Charlotte Ivers - 2025-03-02The Guardian
Grace Dent was unable to resist the charms of this “utterly lovable mega-posh pretend pub” in a backstreet near Victoria Station, while acknowledging that its prices might leave “anyone remotely normally waged standing outside in the cold, staring through the window like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl”.
An iced seafood counter bearing lobsters, carabineros, sea urchins and house caviar (served with turbot-dripping potatoes and creme fraiche at £100 a pop) set the tone for some mouth-watering dishes from Basque-born chef Adam Iglesias.
“You’ll have noticed that I have not called the Prince Arthur a gastropub, despite it clearly being gastronomical and being housed inside something resembling a pub,” Grace explained. “Welcome to the bright new dawn of the turbo-bougie boozer.”
Grace Dent - 2025-03-16Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles must have missed his fellow critics’ upbeat reviews of this smart gastropub with a focus on Basque seafood, given that he found the cooking “unexpectedly remarkable”.
Always alert to sexy cuisine, Tom was turned on by what “could be my dish of the year so far: sea urchin with confit egg yolk, a golden, lavishly lascivious mouthful that teeters between the voluptuous and the utterly debased”.
Lobster rice was “as good a version as I’ve eaten anywhere”, chutoro crudo was “exceptional”, and txangurro (or devilled) crab was “exemplary’” – although “the salting is over-aggressive – a rare misstep”.
Tom Parker Bowles - 2025-05-04
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