The hit-making Public House Group opened their latest pub this week – The Horses in Clerkenwell, which comes galloping hard on the heels of The Hart, which opened last year in Marylebone, joining a four-year-old stable that includes The Hero, The Fat Badger and The Pelican.
The Horses is primarily a dining venue, with a strong emphasis on fish and seafood from Britain and Ireland. It is the latest incarnation of an early Georgian pub known for more than 200 years as the Coach and Horses, which was for many decades the local drinking den for journalists at the Guardian, whose offices were next door. The paper’s move to King’s Cross in 2008 robbed it of that clientele, and it relaunched 10 years later as a dining pub called the Coach under chef Henry Harris, now of Bouchon Racine in nearby Farringdon.
The new owners have transformed the interior with a design aesthetic of understated retro-boozer luxury on similar lines to The Hero, with plenty of wood and naked plaster, white tablecloths and even candles.
The menu at launch lists four types of oyster – Achill, Lindisfarne, Carlingford and Jersey – along with crab, langoustines and lobster, clams, cockles, squid, three smoked fish options, a fish pie and six varieties of fish. Fish-phobes can choose between potato and Wgmore pie, hispi cabbage with seaweed, chicken, onglet steak and pork chop.
The Horses launches formally on Monday 28 September, with a soft opening until then at reduced prices for guests signed up to the Public House Group’s newsletter.
