The Hart is exactly the sort of place you want to be on this most glum of London nights. You battle through the merry Marylebone hordes downstairs, crowding around the bar and spilling into the street, before climbing that precipitous, narrow staircase to a smallish, wood-panelled room that feels like a mix between a Swiss chalet and an Edwardian chop house. Tablecloths are pristine white paper, napkins thick, and candles flicker on every table. Lighting is lusciously low and, at one end, a fire blazes. Throw in a martini, cold as a despot’s heart, and you have a restaurant in which you want to linger.
OK, so the owners are hardly neophytes to the London dining scene, The Hart being the newest venue from Public House Group, who are also behind The Pelican, The Hero and The Fat Badger. They’re exceptionally good at what they do, namely taking old pubs in well-to-do areas and smartening them up, without ever losing sight of what makes a proper local boozer. Here, as at the other pubs, the menu is a mix of exalted bar snacks and no-nonsense British comfort food, clad in a Huntsman two-piece.
Sirloin steak comes with confit potatoes, ‘all buttery allure’
There are cheese straws, with just the right ratio of crunch to chew. And a pork pie, the pastry burnished on the outside and lardy soft within. Peppery meat, from a superior porker, with lashings of jelly, too. Pressed pig’s head is coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried, the interior gently sweet with the merest whiff of the farmyard. Then good sirloin steak, cooked rare. As ever, it’s the details that matter: the gently ferric tang of the meat, and fine confit potatoes, all crisp edges and deep buttery allure.
This is my third visit, my second for dinner. Lunch, a week or so back, was spent in a private room among chefs, restaurateurs, critics and food writers, as we decided the winners of the Condé Nast Traveller Restaurant Awards. We ate delicate crab cakes, a swaggering beef tartare with crisps, an immaculately cooked piece of trout and a banoffee pie filled with glorious excess. A tough bunch, but all unstinting in their praise.
If I have any quibble, it’s the wine list – there’s precious little under £50, and prices can be precipitous. Still, this is food you want to eat, in a place you want to eat it. Which is, I suppose, the whole point of going out.
About £50 per head. The Hart, 56 Blandford Street, London W1; thehartw1.com
