Riding the storm: Ali Ross outside her pub
(Picture: Matt Writtle)There is a pub where one of the punters gives the landlord sweets most weeks and where the regulars sometimes wear t-shirts bearing its name. Given Londoners are sometimes unfairly earmarked as unfriendly sorts, it might sound like an idyllic country hideaway, but it’s actually the Greek Street Coach and Horses in Soho. “I think a lot of people just want a place where they can feel that they’re still a part of something,” says Ali Ross, searching to explain why so many of the same faces turn up week in, week out. She is interrupted as a local taps her shoulder hello.
Ross has managed the place since 2019 and like countless venues across town she is, after two years of it, facing another tumultuous time. As by now thoroughly documented, the hospitality industry is staring listlessly at bleak circumstances: supplier costs are up, consumer spending is tempered by the cost-of-living crisis — it being January doesn’t help — and rail strikes are doing more damage.
