Raising the bar: The Pelican, open since 1872, has been artfully done up
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)I think my mate Mark might have been the first person I heard describe a formerly scuzzy, dramatically renovated pub as having been “gastrobombed”. You do not fight unimprovable coinage when you hear it. And so, as I pushed through the doors of The Pelican in Notting Hill — a freshly revamped, once notoriously insalubrious boozer that, in one form or another, has stood on All Saints Road since 1872 — I got the distinct sense of a pin having been recently pulled on a tasteful interiors grenade.
The walls were a buttery, artfully scuffed cream, accented here and there with bleached bushels of dried plants. The beer taps on the blonde wood bar were unsullied by anything as gaudy as keg badges telling you what was in them. And beside the stairs, glimmering, uplit jars of ferments and pickles lurked like Victorian medical curiosities. “Do you think that ever gets used?” said the pal who had joined me, nodding towards a dartboard that did look somewhat ornamental, perched in the corner of the sunlit, precisely art-directed space.
