Huw Gott and Will Beckett say the key to a great gastropub is a simple idea, well-executed. Mark Taylor met them at their award-winning incarnation of an English food pub, the Marquess
Huw Gott and Will Beckett make running a successful gastropub look like child's play. Since opening the Marquess in Islington, north London, in April this year, they've scooped the Best Gastropub award in Time Out magazine and have just launched their own pub/bar consultancy business, Underdog.
The last three years have been a whirlwind for the former school friends. In 2003, they opened their first business venture, the Redchurch Bar and Café in Shoreditch and it was quickly followed by Mexican tequila bar Green & Red in the same area, which won the Evening Standard's Best Bar award for 2006. Then came the Marquess and, most recently, the Hawksmoor in Spitalfields, east London.
So what's their secret? Over lunch at the Marquess, they tell me that the common link between their businesses is that each one is a "simple, popular idea, done really well".
"We're not trying to re-invent the wheel," muses Will. "At the Marquess, it's just pies, meat and fish, really good beer and friendly staff who know about what they sell. For me, that makes for a good pub.
"We like to run the sort of places where we're happy to hang out ourselves. If you don't do that, there doesn't seem much point in doing it at all."
Glass ceiling
An imposing late Victorian building, tucked away in an Islington backstreet, the
Marquess may be an award-winning gastropub, but it retains the feel and character of a local boozer.
The bar area boasts brown leather sofas, gold chandeliers and an enormous central Grade-II listed bar. At the back, the restaurant has white walls, wooden furniture, antique mirrors and fresh flowers displayed in
retro-style enamel bread bins.
A glass ceiling adds illumination to the dining area's airy feel, and a traditional, well-worn butcher's block is stacked high with loaves of home-made bread.
In the kitchen, head chef Paul Hayes (who used to work at St John Bread and Wine restaurant) majors on simple, seasonal English classics. These include a shearer's stew, Cornish charter pie, boiled ham, mash and parsley sauce and comforting desserts such as Sussex Pond pudding and sherry trifle.
The English theme extends to the wine list, with several home-grown wines available, including Camel Valley Bacchus 2004 and Chapel Down Pinot Blanc 2004.
There's also an emphasis on real ale, with the entire Young's range on sale in draught and bottled form. Beer is a major deal at the Marquess and Will Beckett has enlisted the help of his drinks-writer mother, Fiona, to help with beer and food matching at the pub. They're also working on a beer and food book called Appetite For Ale, to be published by the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) next year.
A discerning clientèle
For Huw and Will, their experience in bars and restaurants has been a major part of their first foray into pubs. For them, it's all about offering quality products.
Huw says: "We really wanted to do something we felt was everything an English pub should be, with nice beer, a comfortable atmosphere and good dining, but without being pretentious or over the top.
"This was a problem pub. It was run-down and grotty; it had a reputation for trouble and attracted a bad crowd. It was doing £3,500 gross a week, purely through wet sales."
Young's clearly saw that the pub, situated between a council estate and a part of Islington where average house prices are about £1m, had potential in the right hands.
Says Will: "I think one of the reasons that Young's was prepared to experiment and explore doing something a little different was as a result of our background.
"They knew that something quite radically different had to be done here and that gave us a chance to step in. We saw it as a challenge."
Huw and Will are typical of a growing number of bar and restaurant operators moving into gastropubs. "The gastropub scene is changing and we're a good example of that," says Will. "We see quite a big gap between the pub and bar industries. Each one has its failings, but one thing we try to maintain throughout our venues is a really good food and drink product. That's our main focus. It amazes us that some pubs don't care about the products behind the bar.
"Our wine and beer sales are high, but we also offer 50 whiskies. We have a genuine interest in wines, spirits and beers."
Will adds: "When I go into a pub, I don't want to drink an optics spirit bought from the local massive wholesaler. People are looking for different things and we attract a more discerning crowd by offering these products."
With 450 meals served each week, the food side of the Marquess has already put them on the map, too. On Saturdays, they're turning tables twice at lunch and dinner.
Shared dishes have proved very popular, with certain main courses available to groups of two, four and even six.
Huw says: "People don't want to cook Sunday roasts any more, so they like ordering it for the whole table in an informal pub setting. We have shared dishes in our Mexican bar and we've noticed that when people are sharing, conversation tends to become a bit more animated and people enjoy themselves more. We want to encourage people to lean across the table and make plenty of conversation with each other."
The beer and food matching in the restaurant has also proved a success, although Huw and Will say it's partly down to staff training.
Will says: "We train the staff to encourage people to dine with beer as much as wine.
"It can be quite a hard sell - not everybody wants to drink beer with food, so you have to know your customer.
"We make sure the staff taste the beers and the food during regular tasting sessions. We wouldn't ask them to sell something they hadn't tasted themselves and it gets them interested and involved."