Cow

Tom Conran's Cow is a rural Irish pub as imagined by Disney - all cutesy cottage-style net curtains, Guinness advertising and glossy 1950s Technicolor paintwork. The bar menu is dedicated to the classic pairing of stout and seafood. Lucky Notting Hill regulars can soak up any excess of the black stuff with platters of oysters, dressed crab or pints of prawns and mayonnaise.

We ate in the more formal first-floor dining room, and, once seated, were presented with a basket of pillowy focaccia, olives and vivid-pink radishes. Together, these took more than just the edge off our hunger and made ordering a starter impossible. There's nothing on the Cow's menu to scare the horses; comforting classics are the order of the day.

Tables of tourists were happily feasting on portions of fish and chips or lamb shanks with mountainous servings of mashed potatoes. A massive pork chop came with a pot of English mustard ready to slather over the accompanying caramelised apples and black pudding. Everything was very competently prepared, but we left feeling the real craic was to be had sitting at the bar with a black velvet and a dozen of Ireland's finest oysters.