The House
The House
63-69 Canonbury Road
London N1
England
Tel: +44 (0)20 7704 7410
Serves lunch and dinner mon dinner to sun; bookings advised; children welcome; terrace.
The House’s owner, a well-bred, fresh-faced young man called Barnaby Meredith, doesn’t look old enough to be drinking here, let alone running the show. In fact, he has been around the block a few times, working mostly as a restaurant manager for Marco Pierre White. The informality and ‘no rules’ ethos of gastropubs always appealed to him, but he thinks that the original shabby chic look isn’t for everyone and that the food is often sub-standard. So he decided to bring glamour and Michelin-standard cooking – though not Michelin-style dishes – into a pub environment.
The talented Jeremy Hollingsworth, who trained under Marco Pierre White and gained a Michelin star at Quo Vadis, is in the kitchen. This man can cook. He turns out a redoubtable jambon persillé with a salad of warm potatoes and grain mustard dressing, revitalizes shepherd’s pie by making it with sweet chunks of braised lamb shank, delivers a mean eggs Benedict and a damned fine roast chicken. The food is largely traditional French, with a few American and British classics thrown in, and is neither fussy nor fashionable.
The House has moved the gastropub along, but not so far away from the original idea that it loses its raison d’être. Meredith is right when he says that now that gastropubs are no longer a novelty in London, each one will stand or fall by its cooking. This one will stand.
