The Daily Telegraph
“The meat is exceptional, the wood-fired oven the largest such weapon I have ever seen, the decor classic and unobtrusive, the service skilled and smart and old-school,” he said, struggling to come up with something new to say. Then he had a brainwave: “even the loos are traditional, furnished with Thomas Crapper porcelain.”
William Sitwell - 2024-03-10Tim Hayward rated the launch of this pub and dining room just off Piccadilly Circus as “the biggest opening since the pandemic” (take that, Arlington!), and added his name to the long list of critical thumbs-ups, pronouncing it “actually a very good pub”.
Tim Hayward - 0000-00-00The Guardian
Grace Dent devoted her review to “elegant old-school boozer” The Devonshire, in the week leading up to the first anniversary of its launch – on the basis, perhaps, that it is always worth revisiting the most hyped of openings to check that they have delivered on their promise.
“It’s quite hard to remember that this is just a pub”, she pointed out. Its founding trio – landlord Oisin Rogers, Charlie (Flat Iron) Carroll and Ashley (Fat Duck and Dinner) Palmer-Watts – “are not reinventing the art of hostelry; instead, they’re leaning heavily on a yesteryear type of fun that wraps around punters like a comfort blanket.”
And, she made clear, they have succeeded in spades – not just with the “refined comfort food” they serve, but in the atmosphere they have created mixing boho Soho (Colony Room and Coach & Horses), 1980s Groucho Club ebullience and 1970s Kilburn Irishry.
All said, there’s only one thing Grace doesn’t like about it: “the main bar is usually so packed with testosterone-fuelled, braying men in gilets, all necking Guinness like there’s no tomorrow, that you may not wish to linger there long, or even at all.”
Grace Dent - 2024-10-27
