On December 10th of last year, with apparently zero consultation of the relevant communities, The Times unveiled its list of ‘London’s Poshest Pubs’. This is a bit like your colleague who once went to Polo in the Park listing her six favourite partridge drives. Comments on the article, you’ll notice, “have been disabled” — presumably because they contained little more than a hundred Hugos and Archies saying ‘does Polzeath still count as West London? I once lost my signet ring inside a Downe House girl behind the Oystercatcher”. Or, in actuality, a hundred midlanders saying: “I’ll settle for the Dog & Duck at Streeplethorpe-Hagstable anyday!” — which is not particularly helpful to the debate because frankly we’d all much rather an old-fashioned boozer where pints cost £3.20 and people go into the cubicles on their own rather than in threes, as it happens. But that’s gentrification, baby, and the show must go on — especially if the price of my uncle’s townhouse in South Ken is to be maintained, poor Michael.
Here — in the first edition of our new weekly newsletter ‘The Friday Five’ — are ‘The Five Actually Poshest Pubs In London’. Take them with a pinch of salt. Or a pinch of anything you like, actually.
No surprises there! Ha! The handsome corner pub is a classic of the genre, with the waiting list for its coveted outdoor benches said to rival those at Eton or whichever other schools exist. A stately galleon in appearance and bearing, its name comes from the HMS Surprise, a captured French Navy ship which was in turn used to steal back the HMS Hermione from the Spanish Armada. Which is apt for a pub in which one does often need to rescue a Hermione from a Spaniard.
The Antelope gets in largely on historic terms, rather than on any particular modern-day brilliance or aesthetics. (A pretty good summation of the wider aristocracy, actually.) But its enduring position in the sleepy hinterlands just north of Sloane Square does lend it a posho permanence — as does the fact that it was established in 1780, meaning it’s been here longer than most of the highly nouveau Grosvenor Estate around it.
Two for the price of one here, which is a way better deal than the two for a hundred that the ex-Marlborough boys will try to pitch you over a Guinness. The Cow (and its de facto overspill area, The Westbourne) has a distinctive boho-chic feel — Black Velvet Socialism, perhaps — because nothing pairs better than rolled cigarettes and decent Maldon oysters. The crab linguine at The Cow is pretty good, to be fair, and the terrace outside the Westbourne is a rare London sun-trap, which might explain all the suspiciously tanned euros.
The Admiral Cod is mentioned 236-times in the Sloane Rangers Handbook, a number bested only by entries for ‘elderly labradors’; ‘fashionable gout’; and ‘not crying at funerals’. It is the type of place your father went to in the late eighties before selling his Chelsea three-bed for £150 or something, and has not encountered a jawline since Waterloo.
A Chelsea racing pub in which a minor Right Hon will pitch you a 100-1 sure-thing in exchange for a peach Jubel, The Sydney has its own jockey silks on the wall and its own horse in the bathroom, if recent noises are to be believed. Jolly and unassuming, its extreme proximity to the ‘golden-triangle’ of the King’s Road Registry office, St Luke’s church, and Chelsea & Westminster Hospital means it amply caters for pre-pints at christenings, weddings, and great-aunt plug-pulls.
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Issue 2
As the club sandwich goes mainstream, this guide tracks down the finest examples around the world, from alpine hotels to the Riviera, celebrating those that balance indulgence with structural integrity.
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