Bars & Pubs

By Guy Dimond

What's in a name? Around £67 million if that name's Gordon Ramsay, apparently. That's one current estimate of the value of the Gordon Ramsay brand - as opposed to Gordon Ramsay the man, who is, as anyone who's seen him on TV will agree, priceless.

Ramsay may never have even set foot in his latest pub for all we know, yet the name is there on the pub sign outside for all to see: www.gordonramsay.com, a guarantee of quality as clear as putting Apple, Nike or Coca-Cola on a product. Except, of course, restaurants and gastropubs cannot maintain the same quality control or consistency as manufactured goods. Dining out just isn't like that: even the best places have quiet days, off days, days when you are stuck next to the table of raucous drunks, and days when everything just falls into place perfectly.

The Devonshire is the second gastropub created by his huge team (around 1,200 employees at last count). The Devonshire's executive chef is credited as Mark Sargeant, who must be moonlighting from his other jobs as head chef of Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's, and being the uncredited creator - with Gordon Ramsay, of course - of Ramsay's column in the Times on Saturdays.

As you would expect, The Devonshire closely resembles Gordon Ramsay Holdings' first gastropub, The Narrow in Wapping, which also has Sarge in charge. It's in a good-looking building, sensitively renovated with classic looks, in this case, dark wooden panelling and a sturdy bar. There are a couple of real ales (Deuchars IPA and Fullers London Pride), plus good bar snacks for the drinkers' side of the bar. But, like The Narrow, the real focus is the dining area, which is styled to look like a pub though, really, it's a restaurant.

Our call went to a central reservations line, where we were given a slot at 7.15pm, 'but we need the table back by 8.45pm'. On arrival, you're led straight to your table; a wine list appears as if by magic. Service was very attentive and smiling. The menu's a treat to read, with retro-styled British dishes given prominence. Brown Windsor soup was a favourite of Queen Victoria but was gently disappearing from the British canon when its fate was sealed by an appearance on the menu at Fawlty Towers. This revisionist, postmodern version is a perfectly smooth but viscous purée, created in a similar manner to a French onion soup with lots of browned onion and browned chicken-stock flavours; it's a rich and hearty autumnal dish, served with a shot glass of Madeira. These days this dish is of renewed interest to scholars of British food, and not just grannies who have left their dentures at home.

Main courses follow a similar approach of old-fashioned inspiration, modernised. Cock-a-leekie soup is a Scottish broth of leek, potato and sometimes prunes in chicken stock, but the cock-a-leekie pie here had good chunks of poached chicken meat under a faultless pub pie pastry crust. The potato mash was shaped into a giant quenelle, but still had the oddly stiff texture of canteen mash. Braised pigs' cheeks were good, though not as good as some versions (Chez Bruce, for example; though few are).

The desserts were another trip down memory lane: chocolate sponge took me back to school dinners, while lemon posset - served in a wine glass - was paired with shortbread fingers.

The first Ramsay pub, The Narrow, is outstanding; but is The Devonshire as good? On this early showing, no. Around us, our fellow diners - some of whom we knew - were critical of the portion sizes (smallish for a gastropub, even two-course diners will need to order three), the wine pricing (restaurant prices, not pub prices), among other details.

But I couldn't help thinking there was an element of schadenfreude about trying to pick fault with The Devonshire. It's a good place to eat, though I'm not sure it's a gastropub, and I'm not sure, either, that anywhere can live up to the enormous hype that now surrounds the Gordon Ramsay brand.

Time Out London 1941, October 31-November 4