Bars & Pubs

By Susan Low

By the late nineteenth century gin palaces were thriving in London. The style bars of their time, they shone with mirrors, their high ceilings were ornate with detailed cornicing, glass windows were intricately etched and the interiors glowed with bright, modern gas lighting.

You can still find a few gin palaces in London with their finery intact. The Princess Victoria near Shepherd’s Bush first appeared around 1829, at a major tram interchange between Acton and Shepherd’s Bush; it was the perfect place for a swift dram on the journey home. During the Victorian era it had numerous improvements, culminating in a major refit in 1899 by the leading pub architect of his day, William Bruton. You can still see his sweeping carved-wood, harp-shaped bar, and the high ceilings with original cornicing work around the light-filled atriums.

More than a century on, plus a decade languishing as one of the area’s more dodgy boozers, time has taken its toll on the Princess; but new leaseholders – Matt Wilkin and James McLean – have reworked it into a stunning new gastropub. The wooden bar is now topped in white marble, the floor replaced with salvaged parquet, the walls painted a slatey grey-green and decorated with portraits of Victorian grandees and stuffed animal heads. But in its new post-Victorian incarnation, wine – not gin – is the drink of choice.

Wilkin was head sommelier for several years at The Capital hotel in Knightsbridge, which is noted for its excellent wine list. Appropriately, Princess Victoria’s list is equally impressive. It’s Euro-centric, particularly strong on Iberia, Germany and France, but with some excellent bottles from New Zealand as well. Wilkin has also opted for lesser-known regions that offer interesting, food-friendly drinking for considerably less outlay.

If you fall in love with a wine (quite possible here) you can purchase it to take home: PV is also a wine shop, with a separate price list that includes many of the same bottles on the restaurant list, in addition to bottles for serious collectors – classed-growth Bordeaux, top-rank Burgundy and the like. Bottles are marked up fairly here: the Portuguese Quinta do Crasto 2006 costs £13.75 retail, £27.50 on the premises.

While Wilkin runs the front of house with considerable panache, James McLean looks after the kitchen. He used to cook with Paul Merrett at The Greenhouse in Mayfair, and now he applies this precision to a gastropub menu, with resounding success. A starter of smoked trout mixed with wild mushrooms, heaped on toasted sourdough bread set the tone for the meal: satisfying, moreish, perfect in every detail. Simple flavour pairings worked without fail, such as the green bean and shallot salad with potted Dorset crab. Shreds of braised rabbit were served in a tower of papparadelle, garnished with strips of smoked Polish-style sausage. A chef’s haute cuisine training must be hard to resist: a lemon ricotta cake, served with a curl of poached apricot purée, was evocative of Mayfair dining that would cost twice the price.

The Princess Victoria works on every level. It’s a piece of history, without being a museum. The wine list is one of London’s best, and the real ales are well-kept. The standard of cooking puts Gordon Ramsay’s latest gastropubs to shame. And judging by how things went on our visit in the second week, the bonus of great service and atmosphere make this the place to eat in west London right now. Let’s hope this lovely pub doesn’t turn into the claret-swigging equivalent of a Hogarth print once the hordes arrive, as they surely will as soon as the word gets around.

Time Out Issue 1976: July 3 - 9 2008