When Tamsin Olivier — daughter of the great Laurence — and painter Abigail Osborne took on The Engineer in 1994, it was taking £2,000-a-week. They ran it as an early gastropub, fitting for Primrose Hill, and soon attracted celebrity clientele: Harry Enfield, Sienna Miller, Jamie Oliver and Lisa Snowdon were regulars.
The food was local and seasonal, the beer well-kept and the atmosphere distinctly 1990s. It had “a vibe”, everyone went.
Pubs are complicated. I’ll try to explain this briefly: Olivier and Osborne licensed the pub from Mitchells & Butlers (M&B), which owned the building but didn’t have a say in how it was run. The pair were landladies, paying the company £100,000 a year in rent and that sum again for the beer, but the profits were (mostly) theirs.
In 2011 the Morning Advertiser reported the place was making £30,000 a week. M&B moved to take it back under its control and served notice, going against a celeb-backed campaign to keep it the same.
A chain pub will have good food and wine. But they don’t have offbeat landladies, there’s little chance of a lock-in and there’ll never be free roast potatoes on the bar
This happened to a lot of places around then, which is why a lot of pubs look the same now. They offer decent food, the beer selection is strong and the wines are fine, but they don’t have offbeat landladies, there’s little chance of a lock-in and there’ll never be free roast potatoes on the bar. Branded pubs just feel different to independent ones.
The Engineer recently underwent a refurbishment and it looks swish as anything now. There’s monkfish scampi and beef shin croquettes to nibble with £7.60 pints of Guinness, £8 Camden Hells and bottles of Minuty. Over the weekend, I enjoyed a glass of non-descript white wine there. It felt summery, bustling, but I saw no famous faces. I’d recommend it to most. But... is it a vibe? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
65 Gloucester Ave., Greater, London NW1 8JH, theengineerprimrosehill.co.uk
Bar snacks
Aki
1 Cavendish Square, W1, akimalta.com
A bar in a grand old vault? Another is coming. A Maltese restaurant group has reportedly spent £15 million refurbishing what was once a Victorian bank at 1 Cavendish Square. There’ll be a restaurant — Aki, mirroring one of the same name in Maltese capital Valetta — and a cocktail bar below. The food and drink will be Japanese-inspired, we understand, though there are no menus out just yet. The space is expected to open in the autumn.
Kylie Minogue Wines, Côtes de Provence rosé
Available now, kylieminoguewines.com
To celebrate Kylie Minogue Wines’ fifth anniversary and sales of more than 20 million bottles, the brand has launched a limited-edition, floral-inspired Côtes de Provence rosé. At £18, it’s cheaper than Whispering Angel, which some believe has had its time in the sun. Only one restaurant will be serving the rosé (though it will also be available online) — the Roof Gardens in Kensington, where the darling of pop marked her 57th birthday last week.
