Restoring faith in the gastropub

When I whinged about food-obsessed bloggers the other week - I was fed up eating in empty, just-opened rooms with only these portly, camera-toting chaps for company - I missed another irritation. Which is having dinner with one and then finding my review scooped at length on the Internet, a medium uninterested in such niceties as publishing dates.

Anyway, any similarity to this and the Dos Hermanos blog hagiography is entirely not coincidental - so ya boo sucks to all those who love to plague me with e-mails crying plagiarism.

For The Duke of Wellington has restored my faith in the maligned gastropub with a meal of serious quality served by a bunch of young people who know exactly what they're doing - principally chef Fred Smith, a proper grown-up talent.

We ate silky pork rillettes; brave, 45-day-hung Ginger Pig steak with fabulous, rustly chips; a moist-fleshed, crisp-skinned guinea fowl on a sultry bed of deep, dark cavolo nero and lentils flanked by a magnificently tumescent Toulouse sausage; tagliatelle with real bite and oodles of dill-scented lobster.

Cheeses were in perfect nick and a light but calorific sticky toffee pudding was Bunterishly good. The off-Marylebone location is a gem, the room is fun and funky, with rickety tables and no pretensions.

The Duke Of Wellington
Crawford Street, London, W1H 2HQ