Two of London’s most successful operators of recent times — Carl McCluskey’s award-winning Crisp Pizza and the Devonshire — have partnered to open a new pub in Mayfair, the Marlborough.
Expected to open early in October, the Marlborough takes over the Grade II-listed corner site of a former pub on North Audley Street, which has sat vacant since 2020. Upstairs will be a traditional wet-led pub for drinking in, with standing room by the bar and fitted seating at the back, while downstairs will be dedicated to Crisp Pizza, with restaurant-style seating for 52. There will also be an outside terrace, with room for about another 50.
Fans of Crisp should find that getting one of its famous pizzas is easier than before: whereas in its current home — McCluskey’s family pub the Chancellors — the ovens can cook 50 pizzas an hour, the kitchen in the Marlborough, which has been purpose built, can do 150 in the same time. “But we’ll work up to that,” says McCluskey. Those familiar with the Hammersmith original will find Crisp almost unchanged in its new home. The menu will be the same, but may eventually be expanded.
Though the Devonshire’s team of Charlie Carroll, Ashley Palmer-Watts and Oisín Rogers have been involved substantially in the project — and have invested financially in it — McCluskey will be the one running the operation. “It’s definitely not another pub from me,” says Rogers. “You won’t see me here unless I’m coming in for a pint.
“We have a small interest in its future profitability, but we’re very happy to let Carl push it forward, and delighted he got the deal over the line.”
It is a deal that has been a long time coming. McCluskey first looked at the pub in 2023, but only took the keys in February of this year. Between the two, the pub was stripped down to a shell.
“I first came as a joke, I’m not going to lie,” says McCluskey. “I just was nosy — like, I wanna see what a pub is like in Mayfair. Then the landlord [Grosvenor] heard we were here and said, are you going to make an offer? So they came to Hammersmith with their team, I cooked them lunch and they kind of interviewed me, and a week later they said, we’d like you to offer on the site…”
It was a step McCluskey hadn’t necessarily been intending to take: not actively on the lookout, he says he’d only seen a former Homeslice in Shoreditch before the North Audley Street site came up. Still, it proved fortuitous timing: “We’re taking the pizza out of Hammersmith, but the pub will stay.
“I’d love to stay, but there’s a situation with the landlord that has been a bit of a problem… the opposite of these guys, the landlord here, who offered me an unbelievable site and money towards a fit out. Our current landlords have just been taking and taking...” He has been a victim of his own success, he says: as Crisp took off, his landlords wanted a share of the spoils. “In the end, they were effectively asking me to buy my own business back.”
McCluskey says Carroll helped him land the Marlborough after a partnership with another operator went south — “just as I was about to pull out of the deal, Charlie stepped in” — but the pair have known each other for about three years, since Crisp began to go viral and deals and offers were flooding in. “After the American review [Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports], it was like: ‘do you want to come to the Middle East? D’you wanna come here and here and here?’ And operators all over London, big operators were offering me crazy deals — terrible deals, when I look back at it now, but they were trying to catch me at a point when I was quite naive.” He likens Carroll to a big brother “just telling me when to play it cool.”
The Marlborough’s look will be familiar to fans of the Devonshire, too, or the nearby Audley, which Rogers also advised on. There is marmoleum flooring, dark, French polished mahogany joinery, anaglypta on the walls and ceilings, and plenty of burgundy and brass. “The building blocks are there for this to be an absolute smasher of a boozer,” says Rogers. “It’ll be finished to the same standards they would have had 100 years ago. To be honest I think it’s going to turn out better than both the Devonshire and the Audley. I think it’ll look the bollocks.”
Rogers has likewise advised McCluskey on the beer, and has installed the same system for Guinness in the Marlborough as is used in the Devonshire, and which is so acclaimed people fly into London to try it. “The blended gas, the correct taps, proprietary lines, right temperature, separate coolers, all of it,” says Rogers. “So I’m very happy with that.”
McCluskey is clear he wants this to be a pub for everyone, and to that end will offer a pint of Pravha for “about a fiver, maybe £5.20. I’m pretty sure it’s the cheapest pint in Mayfair.” He says that while prices for the pizzas will rise, “it’ll only be a tiny bit.” It’s not been Mayfaired, then? “Nah, not at all.”
It will also be where he is firmly based. “I have so many ties to Hammersmith; I was born in that pub. Lived there for the first two years of my life. But the landlords there…” he trails off. The Chancellors, which has been in the family for more than 40 years, mostly under the operation of his late grandmother, will still operate as a backstreet boozer. “But I’ve worked the last few years for this, I’ve put in a lot of my money in this, so I can’t be messing around,” McCluskey says.
It is all a long way from his early days at the Chancellors, when the pub was taking a pittance and his wage was just £250-a-week. “My nan said to me: we’re fucked. She said that word to me. And our stocktaker, Peter, he said: ‘don’t touch it, boy.’”
But Crisp’s enormous success means McCluskey can now run the pub he’s always wanted to, the way he wants to. His grandmother died suddenly in May, but knew the deal was on. McCluskey is putting the family crest behind the bar. “She was literally the real Peggy Mitchell, big, blonde, glamorous,” he says. “So it’s been... an odd time to be doing this, really.”
“I think she’d have been really fucking proud,” Rogers says.
The Marlborough will open in early October at 24 North Audley Street, W1K 6WD. For more information, visit @crisppizzaw6
