Evening Standard
Jimi Famurewa was rather nonplussed by a revamped neighbourhood
boozer that had been closed for six years before being rescued by Teddy
Roberts and chef Joe Sharratt, formerly of Brixton hot spot Naughty
Piglets.
The interior, all “roughly plastered walls, bare lightbulbs [and] climate
justice stickers in the loos”, felt like “some anarcho dive in Kreuzberg or
Brooklyn”, with little sign of a restaurant. It turned out that the “entire
kitchen operation has effectively been hidden sheepishly away in a
cupboard”.
Some of the cooking was “sensational”, in particular “a thrilling but
modestly proportioned wild garlic duck Kyiv on transcendent piped
mash”. Other dishes did not work, due partly to the limitations of the
cramped kitchen which meant “the Bear’s operatic flavours can feel like
they are being blasted discordantly through tinny phone speakers”.
And while Jimi was sympathetic to the founders’ “implicit concerns about
restaurant-creep in pubs”, he was far from convinced that the answer was
to create an “exclusive chef’s counter”.
