Actor Daniel Craig has teamed up with a pair of hospitality heavyweights, Soho House founder Nick Jones (left) and Flat Iron founder Charlie Carroll (right), to take over a pub called The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell.
Best-known for his role as James Bond in five films, the actor has beer in his veins: “I grew up in pubs. My parents ran a pub. And my grandparents had a pub in the middle of Chester,” he told The Times this week. Earlier this year he quietly launched a lager called Bad Belze, after the Ring O’Bells which his dad ran in Frodsham, Cheshire.
“People have thrown vodkas towards me to run on the back of Bond and I’ve never been very interested. I like vodka, but…”
Back in London after living for years in New York, where he says “there are plenty of great little holes in the wall, but they’re not British pubs“, Daniel is clear about the attractions of The Horseshoe: “You walk through the door and you go: ‘It’s a boozer!’ Obviously we’ll spruce it up but we’re going to keep it as a boozer.”
As for Nick Jones, a pub represents a change in direction, given that he comes fresh from the launch of London’s latest luxury hotel, the St Clement at Temple. He says: “Whatever I’ve done with Soho House I always love going to a pub. I love drinking beer. And I love eating peanuts. I’ve been dying to do a pub.”
Which may sound like The Horseshoe will be a properly old-fashioned beer-and-pickled-onions boozer – when in fact it will probably be very much in the mould of The Devonshire near Piccadilly Circus, the massively successful pub launched last year by another all-star trio including Charlie Carroll (publican Oisin Rogers and chef Ashley Palmer-Watts his teammates on that project).
When it is reopened after the sprucing-up next year, The Horseshoe will be very much a pub for drinking at ground-floor level, along with snacks like with sausages on sticks or ham sandwiches. Upstairs, though, there will be a substantial restaurant from Charlie Carroll.
And will we see James Bond at the bar? Daniel acknowledges that stardom had cost him his anonymity, and that he “mourned” no longer being able to drop in to a pub. But he also vowed: “You will see me here on a Friday night.”
