Every week, 29 pubs close - TOM PARKER BOWLES finds one in West London that's bucking the trend
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It’s not a good time for the great British boozer. In fact, with around 29 pubs pulling their final pint each week, things are downright disastrous. Which is why any new opening is a jolly good thing, particularly one as splendid as The Blue Stoops. Sitting on Kensington Church Street, just down from Notting Hill Gate, this is no run-of-the-mill free house, rather the rebirth of Allsopp’s, the Burton-on-Trent brewer established way back in 1730.
Famed for its pale ales, pilsners and IPAs, Allsopp’s bestrode the globe like a cask-aged colossus – before over-expansion led to financial disaster, and in 1959 the great name was wiped from beer pumps across the land. Lunch at The Blue Stoops is every bit the equal of its handsome surrounds.
Enter Jamie Allsopp, seven times great grandson of founder Samuel, who first revived the brand in 2018. At The Blue Stoops his attention to detail is magnificent: the handsome bar with its elegant blue porcelain frontage; the red-and-black chequered floor; and the metal-topped table stamped with DD (Double Diamond being one of Allsopp’s most successful brews). Jamie is an old friend, and this is not only an exceptional pub, it’s a damn fine restaurant, too.
There’s a blessed simplicity to the cooking, but also an absolute confidence, the menu a sort of merry mishmash of modern European classics. Head chef Lorcan Spiteri, formerly of Quo Vadis, Caravel and Rochelle Canteen, really knows his stuff. Anchovy fillets, softly rich, sit upon lustily buttered toast, buried beneath a sharply dressed tangle of shallot and parsley. There are pert, minerally Carlingford oysters (although they need to get in the Tabasco), a splendidly boozy duck-liver pâté (actually nearer to mousse in texture) and an autumnal broth, filled with borlotti beans and mellow fruitfulness, that’s both restorative and subtle.
