Kiss on the cheek and mine’s a Guinness

They travel and eat around the golfing world but, back in London, ANDREW ‘BEEF’ JOHNSTON and wife JODIE JOHNSTON just fancied a pub lunch. They got more than they bargained for, but loved every minute – sorry hour – of it.

You know you’re going to enjoy a lunch when one of the world’s great chefs insists on a picture with you in front of an artwork of a cow above the words: ‘I love Beef.’

Well, thank you Ashley Palmer-Watts. Humbled and honoured. It might, of course, have more to do with the sensational meats, including plenty of bovine produce, that flip off the fires of The Devonshire in Soho, than a personal tribute. But, either way, it epitomises the casual fun that radiates through this pub, but fun floating alongside the finest of hospitality and fare.

Ashley Palmer-Watts’ fellow owners of The Devonshire, which opened in 2023 after refurbishment of a building once home to a Jamie Oliver Italian, are renowned London publican Oisin Rogers, who as an Irishman knows a thing or two about looking after Guinness, and Flat Iron founder Charlie Carroll, who knows a thing or two about steaks.

A pub, classical as it is, is only part of its offering. The ground floor is very much a pub; it’s just that the floors above house two restaurants, not to mention a butchery and bakery below. I’d suppose you call it, in modern parlance, a gastro pub, but that is a term we’re not keen on and certainly underplays the delights of The Devonshire.

The drink in this establishment, an Oyster card’s throw away from Piccadilly Circus tube, is treated as reverently as the food, and, when it comes to liquid refreshment, the Guinness – dear god, the Guinness – is the high priest.
Sales of the black stuff have soared past 20,000 pints a week at times. Go with the editor of BBQ magazine Rupert Bates, as we did, and it is easy to see how that figure is reached!

As aperitifs go, Guinness, even at its creamiest, is quite heavy, but heaven in a glass. The Devonshire boldly calls it ‘the perfect pint of Guinness’ and it is difficult to argue, even if Dubliners surely will.

Upstairs to the wood embers of the grill restaurant, and I’m not sure if Guinness and scallops and bacon are classical pairings but, what the hell, let’s have another pint.

Small menus are meant to make life easier – not when you have to decide between a fillet of Scottish beef, dry-aged and butchered onsite, or creel-caught langoustines from Oban.

An Iberico pork chop, ribeye of beef, half a lobster, and lamb cutlets lining up on the left of the menu are the galacticos of team Grill Room.

Eyes right and it is difficult to look past the beef cheek and Guinness suet pudding – the type of food that says ‘cancel all post-prandial plans you might have had; you’re going nowhere’. We cancelled all post-prandial plans and went nowhere.

Room for bread and butter pudding? Why not. Everybody knows it pairs perfectly with a Viña Tondonia from the bodegas of Spain.

Another reason not to stray beyond the gold and green warmth of The Devonshire was Ashley Palmer-Watts, and when you’re sitting down with the co-founder, who also happens to be one of the world’s most influential chefs, you don’t have to queue for a Guinness.

The modest Ash, originally from the Dorset village of Maiden Newton where he washed pots as a teenager in Le Petit Canard restaurant, would baulk at such praise, but he was alongside Heston Blumenthal as head chef at The Fat Duck in Bray for 20 years, breaking rules and creating extraordinary sensory food experiences as well as revolutionary flavours, writing whole new gastronomic chapters, and well as earning three Michelin stars along the way.

“It was a magical place to work,” recalls Ash, who had pestered Heston to join his laboratory, sorry kitchen. The Devonshire has a kind of magic all of its own, if turning the culinary clock back to the alchemy and purity of the fire. I think, given the nature of this magazine, we can call it a BBQ restaurant and a mighty fine one at that.