Beautiful boozer: the main room at the Cadogan Arms
(Picture: Adrian Lourie)Great old-school pubs have a dark, musty alchemy that tends to announce itself in small, subtle ways. It is the giddy surprise of a jukebox; a Tayto crisp selection longer than the wine list; the complimentary, last-knockings bowl of warm roast potatoes when one quick Sunday pint has turned, somehow, into six. And so, if I tell you that one of the first things you’ll see at The Cadogan Arms in Chelsea is a dartboard, set within a caramel-tiled, wood-accented and palatially huge glossy glitter ball of a bar area, I hope you will understand it is definitively a good thing.
Initially billed as something of a blockbuster — The Cadogan Arms is a partnership between publican Dominic Jacobs and all-conquering restaurant group JKS, operating under the culinary direction of Kitchen Table’s James Knappett — this grandly rebooted 138-year-old King’s Road establishment is actually a warmer, quieter endeavour. A place conceived by pub true believers where dry-aged steak coexists with televised football in the basement, the house pilsner comes in a ceremonial porcelain tankard, and the food (spearheaded by executive chef Alex Harper) has a full-blooded, all-caps spirit of generous intensity from the off.
Buffalo-style buttermilk fried chicken illustrated this sensibility perfectly. It was tender nuggets of thigh meat in a thickly rutted, sharply crisp batter, begging to be plunged into a nuanced neon orange “Bubbledogs” hot sauce — a survivor from Knappett’s old place — and a bone-white blue cheese dip of immense, ripe clarity. Boneless lamb ribs — lightly jacketed in a cumin-spiced flour, deep-fried to melting lusciousness and accompanied by a mic-drop of a sorrel and anchovy yoghurt — were another drunken fever dream rendered with enlivening care and sophistication.
And, look, I can see it. Dunking battered lumps of protein into hot oil is not exactly an untrammelled route to deliciousness. But I think most of us will recognise that there is a real, subtle art to making these ostensibly simple pub standards land correctly (why, yes, I have just spent a week on holiday in Norfolk, queuing at oversubscribed seafront pubs for the blessed privilege of a terrible burger). And as the main courses arrived — as one of the dozing dogs amid a thin lunchtime crowd of locals ambled over for a neck-scritch — our admiration only grew.
My friend Julian’s roasted brill came as a hefty pedestal of flaking, moist fish, anointed with a heaping of little brown shrimp and golden butter forcefully brightened by slightly too many squished capers (the correct amount). Giant flagons of silky, by-the-glass Monte Santoccio Valpolicella went down like a dream (at £10, entryish-level on the punchily priced list). And the tomato salad, ladled with a sharp shallot dressing and blobbed here and there with lovage mayo, yielded the sort of zinging, speckled tomatoey liquor that makes you want to discreetly ask for a straw.
True, my Welsh Mangalitsa pork chop had dried out and stiffened up a little during cooking. But if you finish (as you absolutely should) with the sherry trifle, then you will finish strong. Presented on a doilied plate in an ornate, ridged glass, it is a painterly layering of reds, whites and yellows (strawberry jelly, deliriously boozy sponge, fluffy snowcaps of biscuit-flecked Chantilly cream) that is one of the most joyous puddings in the capital right now. A pensionable old stager of a dish raised up to a glorious new height.
In this sense, it is representative of the wider project. The first pub from JKS and a culinary innovator like James Knappett could have easily been an overly slick, bloodless affair or a Michelin-bait reimagining of the form. But it is neither. It is an old-bones, purist’s pub, restored with sensitivity, run with palpable affection and afforded an extra culinary gear by the pedigree of its team. It is a pub run by people who actually like them. And, even better, sorts that recognise the timeless magic that can lie beyond creaking saloon doors.
