Has any pub in recent memory captured the hearts and minds of Londoners quite like The Devonshire? Not even a year old and already sporting a nickname, The Dev is that pub from your Instagram feed - eternally packed to the gunnels with full and part time Guinness experts. Upstairs, messrs Carroll, Rogers and Palmer-Watts (yes, Ashley, once head chef of two Michelin-starred Dinner by Heston) have built perhaps the perfect grill room. Day boat fish, Scottish beef and quality crustaceans are cooked over metres of wood ember grills up here, before being ferried across two levels of dining rooms, plus a neat little roof terrace.
The restaurant feels very different to the pub - it’s notoriously hard to get a table, so the atmosphere is one of excitement. It doesn’t have the throbbing noise of the ground floor, but there’s a hum of anticipation and enjoyment. Staff are friendly, knowledgeable, and brilliant as they dart from task to task, keeping this almighty multi-floor behemoth rolling from booking to booking.
The handwritten menus are kept simple, with a straight forward but healthy collection of no-frills gastropub classics. Whoever The Dev has found to write these menus has perfect - almost too perfect - handwriting for a gastropub menu, which very much adds to the charm. There’s little mystery behind the dishes. Scallops, bacon and malt vinegar is exactly that - scallops cooked in shells, with bacon crumb and a good splash of malt vinegar to wake everything up. Simple, but perfectly executed. Iberico pork ribs, though not quite as meaty as your typical pork rib, make up for it with pure flavour and melting fat.
A pile of langoustines arrive with a gentle waft of smoke, and the soft flesh is easily peeled from the shell. They’re extraordinarily good, though not a snip at £36. The beef cooking is also sensational - a hulking beef chop is right on the money of medium rare, fat beautifully rendered and rested. Sure, you pay a pretty penny for all this - more than you’d expect in most other good gastropubs - but you can’t argue with the results. Besides, a table at The Dev is so impossible to get, you’re likely to want to splash out when you get there. If you’re on a budget, there’s also a superb set menu where three courses come in at under £30.
Perhaps the obsession over the downstairs pub is a little bit wild, but the hype over the restaurant is well and truly justified. Long may The Dev continue its reign as one of London’s very best gastropubs.