Banner’s is closing and, as I walked out of the door after Juliette, the owner, had called me in to give me the news, I found my thoughts turning to cherished institutions whose imminent disappearance would have caused me less distress. It was the usual sort of things — the Royal Opera House, Tottenham Hotspur, Gyles Brandreth and The Ritz.
It’s a little over 30 years since I stood with Juliette Banner and her then-partner Andy Kershaw in an abandoned kebab shop in Crouch End, as she imagined how the diner might be structured. A zinc bar, stone and oak floors; simple wooden tables serving a menu with — in addition to full English and Manx kippers — a strong Caribbean and south-east Asian presence, without flirting with the then modish notion of culinary “fusion”.
The music — always playing — was, and is, drawn from the world of Kershaw’s radio shows. You might hear anything from Fela Kuti, Amy Rigby, Solomon Burke, Lucinda Williams or Georgian polyphonic singing. I should declare at this point that I had a fairly vigorous falling-out with Kershaw some years ago, but it would be graceless to ignore the degree of his influence on this iconic venue, especially in terms of its soundtrack and interior design.
Juliette knew what she wanted from the start. “For years,” she told me, “I’d become preoccupied with syphoning cultures and quirks from bars and restaurants wherever I had travelled. I wanted to bring all that back to N8.”
Crouch End in those days was generally ridiculed as a sad surburban enclave known only for having inspired the short story of the same name by Stephen King.
At that time the few competitors to Banner’s included a very affordable breakfast place called The Oval Platter; the owner’s business card advertised his qualification as a “specialist in jacket potatoes”.The first location Juliette had considered was a former bank, which proved too large. As an indication of the way in which the neighbourhood has changed, that building later became a branch of the club Soho House.
What makes a great bar and restaurant? The character of the owner, clearly. Juliette has an unusual degree of empathy with both customers and staff; her unboastful nature belies a degree of resilient determination in business. When you try to define Banner’s, it is almost easier to describe what it isn’t. It’s the polar opposite of a members’ club, with its associated notions of exclusion. It is utterly unlike a rigidly-disciplined brasserie like Colbert in Sloane Square. It has nothing in common with George Orwell’s fictional ideal of a pub The Moon Under Water, with its segregated room for “Ladies”, pewter mugs and “barmaids” who address the regulars each as ‘dear’”.
In three decades at Banner’s — I promise this is true — I have only encountered one member of staff who was anything other than considerate and interesting. She didn’t last long.The food is superb but the menu is short. The wine list is excellent and affordable, but again quite restricted. Before she opened Banner’s, Juliette had been working at another neighbourhood restaurant, Florian’s, whose determinedly chic ambience had it more consistently lauded by professional food writers.
I should perhaps say that I spent a period as a restaurant critic for the Independent on Sunday, but for some reason — my last published review was of an establishment in Liverpool where I mentioned that “my companion” had drunk two bottles of Crozes-Hermitage, then head-butted a fellow diner who he said had been “looking at him” — my tenure ended abruptly.
Banner’s has all the overheads of a grander establishment, such as pride in fresh ingredients, a 12.5 per cent service charge which goes directly to the staff, and a superb chef in Californian Tim Peterman, who has been here for 30 years.
That said, malt vinegar and ketchup sit defiantly on the table and if you really just want grilled tomato and chips, rather than the signature jerk chicken (Kermit, one of the original chefs, brought his Jamaican grandmother’s recipe in with him) or Thai coconut prawn in lime leaf, lemon grass and galangal broth, they will do it.
Banner’s is just out of sight of the centre of Crouch End and so — like a lot of the great bars of the world — Specs in San Francisco, or the Pastis in Barcelona spring to mind — it’s not the first place you might notice by chance.While not a celebrity hangout, it has catered to clients including my fellow aficionado Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman, Noel Gallagher, Rebecca Front, Kano, Cathy Tyson and Bob Dylan.The most prominent artwork is by a friend of Banner’s, Ralph Steadman, and if the atmosphere reminds me of anywhere, it’s the late Hunter Thompson’s local, the Woody Creek Tavern. I wrote (and set the beginning of) most of my first novel in Banner’s.
At table seven I sat down with Johnny Vegas to talk about how we would approach the first draft of his autobiography; the real work might have gone more swiftly and smoothly had we done it here, and not over a week in a remote Irish golf club with an all-night bar. (Banner’s is primarily a restaurant; you can usually restrict your orders to drinks, but at busy times you may be directed to a bar stool).
Its forthcoming closure has made me realise how much time I have spent in places I really didn’t like at all. Where I grew up in Manchester, the nearest pub was The Green End, a once-grand boozer notable in its declining years only for a lowish threshold for violence and occasional visits from Oasis.I drove past it in 2017 as a wrecking ball delivered its first strike, and didn’t experience much more than a brief twinge of nostalgia. I had worked as a barman at The Kingsway up the road, where one client, sensing some provocation in the greeting — “Good evening. Can I help you?” — hurled a pint glass at my colleague Dave, shattering the mirror behind his head. Happy days.
Social media groups for Manchester 19 are sometimes overtaken by the spirit of “How much better things were, back when everything was terrible” — how we miss the polio, the rickets and the outside toilets.
Such groups for Crouch End, meanwhile, do tend to include people discussing how glad they are that they queued for 20 minutes for the best sourdough.
That said, you do have to remember that Joseph Heller really was joking when he wrote that chapter entitled “Every Change is for The Worse”. One conversation I recall having in Banner’s was with the poet John Cooper Clarke, whose favourite dish — goat roti and chips — is yet to impact on his figure. It’s not every day, Clarke told me, that you find a place that is both a refuge from the outside world, and at the same time encapsulates everything that you like about it.
Unlike many independent establishments, Banner’s is still bustling and viable; it’s just that three decades, Juliette says, feels about enough.If you want to visit in the evening — you have until mid-September — you will need to book. It has occurred to me, writing this, just how much I have spent there. That said, if I can misquote a line by the late Vivian Stanshall’s fictional drunk Sir Henry at Rawlinson End: If I had all the money I’ve spent in Banner’s I’d…. spend it in Banner’s.
