A few restaurants are so blindingly good they knock you off your feet. And a few more provoke dire disappointment. But most fall within the great middle band, with how well punters (and critics) react to them often depending on the pre-conceptions they have on arrival.
Judging by its name and location, you would probably roll up to this impressive Victorian boozer, recently relaunched, expecting to find your classic Farringdon gastropub. After all, this is the part of town which, in 1992, saw the launch of the Eagle – generally hailed as London’s first gastropub – and which is nowadays also home to such names as the Peasant, the Easton and the Coach & Horses. All of these are boho-chic sorts of places (as is only right in a postcode favoured by creative types).
The Hat & Feathers, however, seems to have been made over not only with little sense of place, but also with few feelings for pubbiness (even in the ground-floor bar). The dining room is on the first floor. Close-carpeted and with very little décor – the walls spiritually, if not literally, painted in builders’ magnolia – it feels rather like a hotel conference room. The only ‘feature’ is gas lamps, which – on the bright day we visited – were just a waste of gas.
The scoff is entirely in keeping with the décor: there is nothing wrong with it, apart from the fact that it lacks any personality, or sense of time or place. Of the five puddings, for example, four were in the ‘totally uninspired’ category (of the likes of tiramisu and lemon tart). And the fifth was a witty trio on a theme of, er, strawberries. In dead of winter.
Staff are charming, and really try very hard to inject some brio. Sadly, however, their efforts come rather too late.
