A Grand day out at the Union

This review was published in February 2002

We knew The Grand Union was a restored pub with an interesting menu; nowadays we're all familiar with the concept and vernacular of the gastropub. What we didn't expect is what we got.

At first glance, we were staring at a scabby-looking old boozer, the sort where you'd expect to find rheumyeyed old codgers with a half of bitter and a roll-up propping up the bar.

Its outside is indistinguishable from dozens of dingy drinking dens: green glazed tiles and a legend which announces the promise of ales and pies. Windows come with nets.

Inside, the story continues: salt and pepper is presented in Colman's mustard pots with holes drilled in the top; everything's a dingy shade of brown with the occasional patch of faded rose wallpaper and rashes of musty, dusty prints; the veneer fag machine stands guard by the gents - all it needs is a scattering of sawdust on the floor and you have the kind of old sock you've spent most of your formative adulthood avoiding.

Not being good at even sanitised pubs, I immediately panicked on arrival. No bookings! No linen! No kindly greeter to show me to my table!

But on closer inspection, things don't quite add up: there's unoaked Chardonnay on the wine list (wine list!); the menu - alongside prawn cocktail and cottage pie - lists seared duck breast and sea-bass; the typeface on the aforementioned gents is groovily sans serif.

And the whole place is heaving with the kind of self-conscious young groovers, deliberately and expensively dressed-down, who'd never normally be caught dead in a gaff of this ilk.

So what gives? A hint might come from the fact that the first wave of press information about The Grand Union arrived on our desks last November: it's taken the owners - those nice, nobby folks behind Woody's (next door) and the Bush Bar & Grill - until now to get this no-look look just so. (It also promised a canal-side viewing terrace; all very lovely, but what it omitted to report was that the view is of the bus station opposite.)

My date, more design-savvy than I, spotted it immediately, announcing: 'It's just sooo Tchaik Chassay.' Turns out she was right: though he didn't design it, architect Chassay, formerly one of the founders of the Groucho Club, is a Grand Union shareholder.

This is a pedigree pub and I was only too happy when found a seat by a lovely staff member - they're all lovely: intelligent and helpful - and handed a menu.

Short and to the point, it's full of splendid stuff: simple, solid and expertly executed. Neither the frou-frou pretension of the worst of the gastropubs nor the mulicultural chicken-tikka-baked-potato misery of the real corner-shop boozer, it bears the hallmark of a chef with genuine ability who's happy to work within his environmental limitations.