The Somers Town Coffee House in London is a unique proposition offering French bistro-style food within a traditional British pub. It has successfully taken the best of both and married them together to create a winning combination that has helped make the pub a destination venue in what is an up-and-coming pocket of the capital. It is run by Sabine and Vanessa Letort.
Although this Charles Wells-owned outlet operates chiefly as a pub it also has a separate restaurant area - but it is the same high quality French brasserie-style food that is served throughout the venue.
The menu comprises both classic and regional dishes, with the likes of confit of duck proving very popular. These well known French dishes sit alongside some traditional British fare such as Sunday roasts as well as the odd international dish.
The menu is changed on a monthly basis and is complemented by five daily specials - a soup, a dish of the day, a vegetarian, a fish, and a speciality dish. Sabine says these are influenced by the availability of ingredients from the pub's suppliers, which are a mix of French and British. Almost everything is homemade, including most of the bread and sausages.
This focus on homemade French food has helped Sabine and Vanessa, who took over as tenants in 2005, turn around the fortunes of the pub with food now accounting for 30 per cent of sales from zero previously. This has contributed to the pub's turnover increasing by a massive six-fold.
To achieve this level of growth, the sisters have constantly developed the proposition, with changes such as the introduction of a light meals menu that runs all day alongside the à la carte option. Sabine says this replaced the need for separate lunch and dinner menus and has proved "very successful" with 150 covers now served during the week, predominantly at lunch.
Another initiative has been the addition of a bar menu that comprises sharing dishes such as champignons fris aioli and assiete du terroir. "It gives drinkers a 'taster' of what we can do and is driving bookings for the restaurant," Sabine says.
Although the quality of the food and drinks has helped the pub grow by word-of-mouth, its out-of-the-way location still requires marketing to be undertaken and emails are distributed to a database of 600-plus people each month highlighting the new menu. As well as proving attractive to growing numbers of customers the Somers Town Coffee House is also proving increasingly appealing to its employees and the average length of time they have worked at the pub has grown to 2.5 years.