Fit for a king

A stone's throw from Harrow Road and Ladbroke Grove, there is a stretch of the Grand Union Canal that is magical in that pathetic way that urban places have. The proximity of high-rise and grassy towpath, the curve of a grimy old bridge next to the ornate gothic of a Victorian cemetery - even the hoodies on their crazy bikes all work together to create inner-city pretty.

The William IV sits opposite Kensal Green Cemetery and is also pleasing. It's a big old Thirties pub, decorated in the preferred style of dark walls, bare floors with original oak panelling intact. There is a large concrete and geranium-clad patio out back.

It's popular with NW10 types, grunge media and music-business sorts, but even the Notting Hill set laud its Sunday roasts. For the rest of the week the new chef, South African Marcos Georgiou, cooks tapas. This recent change from standard gastro menu is inspired.

Forget solid bits of chorizo and tepid tortilla - this is the hearty gastropub answer to the contemporary Spanish restaurant, Fino. All the dishes are listed in Spanish with translation, indicative of the fact Georgiou picked them up working in Southern Spain. The menu here offers simple, modern Spanish food, light in style and largely seasonal. A salad of grilled courgettes, goat cheese and pine nuts was a satisfying mix of cream, crunch, sharpness and freshness. The chickpeas in the pumpkin and tahini salad were on the hard side, but other than that what a happy mix of sunny, comfort flavours.

Swordfish was deftly cooked so that it retained tenderness and moistness. It came with a dry and pokey dollop of salsa verde - an exceptionally low-fat dish, if that's your thing.

Less healthy is the arroz negro: the soft, rich, glossy black-squid-ink paella, made here without too much protein to interrupt the rice - just a few tender rings of dry fried squid on top. This dish rarely travels well and this one was very wet and not quite baked enough to mellow the squid ink, but pretty good nonetheless.

A wild-boar terrine was tightly packed with chorizo and black pudding and complemented with homemade chutney.

We ate every scrap we ordered, more than I have listed here, which has to be the final measure of (1), our enjoyment and (2), our greed. I wasn't drinking, but the Pompous Surfer's rioja was low in price and high in satisfying leatheriness.

Two puddings - an ace crumble with a super-crunchy buttery top and an almond-and-prune tart - showed this chef to be consistently good from start to finish. At these prices, this quality of food is a steal.

William IV
786 Harrow Road, NW10 5JX