Pubs are having a hard time of it. Same as it ever was? Perhaps not. This time, the forecast is stormy: the number of pubs is at a record low and six close each day. But the gloom is lifting in certain parts. The Walmer Castle opens today in Notting Hill, while in Stroud Green, former Southampton Arms man Nick Bailey is drawing a crowd at The Robin. And the restaurant opening of the winter? It could be a four-storey behemoth of a boozer, and a freehouse at that.
This is the Devonshire, which opens on Friday in the part of Soho that teeters into Piccadilly. It’s a Friday that’s been a long time coming — after nine months of tastings, two years of planning, 10 years of talking, and 20 years of kitchen connections. The place is a giant, in size and scope, and already in reputation — though this, most likely, comes from those behind it. Oisín Rogers is the former Guinea Grill publican whose usual billing is London’s most famous landlord, Charlie Carroll is the founder of Flat Iron, and Ashley Palmer-Watts made his name as head chef at Heston Blumenthal’s industry-defining Fat Duck. Carroll and Rogers have their names above the door and decorating the beer mats; Palmer-Watts was their pick of the chefs who could turn their daydreams into something to taste.
The story of how they met is a long one — the kind told best over pints — but it boils down to steer and suet pudding. Rogers and Carroll met “in 2013, at a drinks thing, when we started talking about roasting an entire steer,” Rogers remembers. A few drinks in, it turned into talking about running a pub. From there, Carroll says, wryly: “The conversations were on and off for years.”
An ultimatum came Christmastime 2021, with Carroll’s patience waning. “And so Ois turned and said, ‘well, it’ll have to be really, really big, I can’t be doing some little fiddly thing’” — Carroll rolls his eyes — “And he says, ‘course, it’ll need to be about five minutes’ walk from the Coach & Horses [Rogers’ favourite pub]. I went: great, I’ll just have a look down the back of the sofa and pull out a massive great pub in the middle of Soho, then.” Rogers, smiling, says: “And there are not many. In fact, there are none. I thought that was it.”
But Carroll is not the sort easily dissuaded. The Devonshire fills four-storeys wrapped around the corner of Denman and Sherman streets, in a site that spent its last 15 years or so as a Coqbull and a Jamie’s Italian. Accordingly, it needed a complete refit, and now comprises a pub bar on the ground floor, above which are two floors of restaurants with room for 150 in each, and a rooftop that will open next year. Still, the bones of the building looked the part, having been built in 1793 as “a corner Soho boozer of no particular merit,” says Rogers. “But it’s nice to have that history and heritage. And I think it’s a noble thing for us to say: we’re opening a pub from scratch that wasn’t here 10 years ago.”
With a decade of ideas to organise, Carroll and Rogers needed a hand. “I’m very passionate about how some brilliant countryside pubs have made themselves destinations by doing food people really love to eat,” says Rogers. The pair weighed up who to approach. “There was this conversation about a very particular suet pudding we’d both had that stuck in the mind for years,” says Rogers. The cook? Palmer-Watts.
Twenty years ago, Carroll had cooked under Palmer-Watts at the Fat Duck, and the fit today is a nice one. The chef is known for meticulousness, but also consistency. “That’s it with Ash. There are other two and three star chefs out there,” says Carroll. “But find me one putting out 300 covers a day, seven days a week. You ain’t gonna find many.”
When Palmer-Watts met Rogers for the first time — “in the Coach & Horses,” grins the chef, “where else?” — the idea was quickly laid out. “And then we all spent three days locked in Ois’s flat, talking through what the vision was.”The vision, as it turns out, is simple enough, even if the execution is deceptively complex. “What we’re aiming at is: it’s all the pub food you’ve had, but it’s the best version of that. The very best,” says Palmer-Watts.
Carroll leans forward. “We’re not putting a twist” — he spits the word, as though it is rancid — “on anything. We’re doing a chocolate mousse. It’s not chocolate and cardamom mousse, it’s not mousse with a f***ing macadamia tuile, it’s a chocolate mousse. But it’s the best f***ing chocolate mousse I’ve ever tasted.”
With a full-time test kitchen running since February, the approach sounds obsessive, although admittedly effective. “The lobster! Jesus!” says Rogers. “The bacon sandwich,” murmurs Carroll, with more choice language. “My wife couldn’t get over the bread and butter pudding,” says Palmer-Watts. “I was like: what did you expect?!”
It’s an approach similarly applied to the sourcing, with Carroll and Rogers touring suppliers across the UK since the summer of last year. But it’s not just the ingredients; such diligence is in the preparation too. Below the first floor of the pub is a bakery, doing every bit of bread and pastry the pub needs, and beside that is a temperature-controlled butchery, with room for 4,000 steaks.
Working there is George Donnelly, “who we brought over from Australia. He was the senior man at [world-famous butchers] Victor Churchill,” says Rogers. Every bit of meat served in the Devonshire is prepared by Donnelly on site — not just for the cheeks and chops but for the sausage rolls and scotch eggs too.
The menu — which includes pea and ham soup, pork scrumpet, lamb sweetbreads on toast, as well as lobsters, fillets of brill, and plenty of steak — is largely cooked on an enormous wood grill that is the centrepiece of the first-floor dining room. “We were absolutely adamant that we only wanted to cook over wood,” says Rogers. “It’s back to a more primal style of cooking, like you’d find in Spain, France, Italy,” adds Carroll.
Bar snacks will be served in the pub, while the two floors of restaurants will share a menu and wine list, though the vibe in each differs. “This is more Harwood Arms-y,” says Carroll, nodding to the room with the grill in it. Upstairs is a bistro-style room, and then the carpeted and curtained Claret Room, “a bit more Otto’s.”
What’s the difference, besides the looks? “Same menu, same service, but I think you’ll have a certain feeling of it being a little bit more timeless in the Claret — and I think if we were going for a long lunch, this is where we’d sit.” One for those who come in for martinis at noon and finish lunch about 10pm? They nod, laughing.
But this difference speaks to the Devonshire’s guiding lights. “We want to appeal to everyone. Don’t want to codify how the guests enjoy the place; we want to be egalitarian and accessible,” says Rogers. Carroll turns serious: “Bin man, chairman, everybody’s welcome, everybody’s treated the same.”
This accessibility is reflected in the prices — pints from £5, and a set menu offering three courses from £29, or £25 for two. Palmer-Watts adds that the menu itself, though classic-led, also has something for everyone, with lighter bites like a chopped salad, crab, and simply-grilled fish. The three point to the staff being majority women-led as a way to help alleviate the inherent blokiness that can mar some pubs.
The aim, then, is to get back to what made pubs work in the first place. “The pub is a great leveller. It takes away class, it takes away age and takes away race. It gives people a place they can genuinely feel comfortable, safe and happy,” says Rogers. Says Carroll: “The thing with seeing pubs closing is, it amplifies the need to deliver an amazing experience for people, one that’s worth it. I think we’re pricing fairly and over-delivering on quality and service.”
What it amounts to, then, is an opening without shortcuts. Nothing’s been skipped over, whether the ceilings, walls and the floors, which all look a century old, to the Guinness, refined after Rogers dragged Carroll to Kehoe’s in Dublin to have a look at how they do theirs, reputed to be the best in the world (the Devonshire’s is a perfect mimicry, down to the gas, lines and temperature, and so unique in London).
And while they only went for the pints, Rogers pilfered rather more. “I said to Ois, look at this barman work, he’s like a bloody sushi master,” remembers Carroll. “Two weeks later, he says, ‘By the way, the pair of barmen running that bar, now they’re running ours’.
”The care comes, it seems, from what the trio hope they’re giving to Soho. “My aim is to be running this place for the next 20 years, if I can” says Rogers. “But I hope it’s still going a century later.”
This a pub they have long dreamed of, as though chasing something they know but have never seen. And while they won’t admit it — “that’s for others to say” — the intention is to run the best pub in the world. Or at least their idea of it. There will be no other Rogers and Carroll freehouses; this will be a one-off. And so they are unlikely to save the industry. But for now, they’re just hoping to remind people how good pubs can be, and why they exist. It starts with a willingness to sail against the wind.
