Eating Above a Pub

The merits of the dining room at the French House pub in Soho are multivarious and trans-seasonal. Its modest size lends it a sense of exclusivity and provides those within a temporary kinship. The staff are wry and glamorous and the menu, though compact, always manages to touch all the requisite bases. The oysters are clean and flecked with pinked shallots, the chips are skinny and honest and built like shards of ice, and the madeleines are truly imperial. There is no better way to end a meal this side of the Seine.

But it’s the altitude that really seals the deal. At, say, 2:24pm on a Thursday in July, the sunlight on that little two by the window is warm but indirect, and the gaudy, staccato sounds of Dean Street waft up from below. In winter, it feels like a sanctuary from the cruel weather without, and you are buoyed by the burble of the raucous bar below. You have escaped to long-lunch island, and the unreasonable world out there can wait. 

A dining room above a pub can be a magical place. Most of the rooms above British pubs act as overspill, places of surplus revelry. They are where big lunch groups, Tuesday quizzes and questionable theatre are secreted away from the regular clientele; where lone men sit on a Sunday afternoon watching football on an out-of-focus projector.

But the French House, and a few others, prove that the space need not be wasted. In fact, at Bouchon Racine in Farringdon, the roles are reversed. 

Despite sitting above a decidedly ersatz local, the impossibly good bistro continues to be one of the hottest tickets in town. Classic brasserie fare is flying right now, and no one in the city is doing it better than Henry Harris and his team at Racine. And again, the menu is majestic, stuffed with Bayonne ham and bavette and calves brains on toast, but it’s the feeling of being in an eyrie that makes it double special. The pub below is dark and sticky and too close to the crush of Farringdon station to have any real character of its own. But the dining room is both cosy and light-filled, and when you arrive they take your coats and offer you a cocktail, like you’ve snuck up to a Montparnasse apartment for dinner.

Like many others, the lovely dining room above the George in Fitzrovia was once the landlord’s flat. When it opened in early 2022, the plan was to have a traditional pub downstairs and a more polished dining destination on the first floor, in what had been the standing landlords’ flat for the 200-odd years. The issue is that the bar downstairs was - and still is - a solid boozer, and the noise beneath was antithetical to a fine dining restaurant. “When people are sat there with a refined plate of food, but their table is shaking because downstairs is bedlam, [the two rooms are] conflicted,” explains Dom Jacobs, managing director of pubs at JKS group, who own the George (alongside Gymkhana, Lyle’s, Hoppers, and scores more of your favourite places.) 

Jacobs explains that balance between up and down is hard to achieve at a pub, especially in the city. “In London, if you want fancy dining you can have that in so many places and the pub is there for a certain [different] experience,” he says. The menu at The George may have casualised since opening - expect a great burger, cottage pie, sticky toffee pudding etc. - but it still packs a punch. And the Guinness is very, very good. Two preprandial pints are advised.

There is less concern for balance at The Mount Street Restaurant in the heart of Mayfair, which is starkly different to the Audley Public House below. The former is accessed via a lift next to the bar in the latter, and while the pub is wood-panelled and darkly Dickensian, the restaurant is equipped with floor-to-ceiling windows, mosaic floors and art on every surface, courtesy of parent group and hotelier to the aesthete-élite, Artfarm.

The difference here is there isn’t much sense of a connection between the two, and no doubt many people go for a pint without knowing lobster pie and Francis Bacon are on the go upstairs.

But a tangible bond of some kind is crucial in the pub-dining room continuum. From above, there needs to be the whiff of hot butter and caramelising meat, and from below, a sense that the growing reverie will only be augmented by your arrival.

The appeal is in the duality: dinner and a show.