London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Central London: Holborn and ‘Legal London’
Olde Cheshire Cheese, London EC4
Traditional pub (Samuel Smith)
Wine Office Court, 145 Fleet Street EC4A 2BU
T (020) 7353 6170
Open 1100 (1200 SSn)-2300 (1600 Sn). Children welcome if dining.
Cask beers 1 (Samuel Smith), Other beers 6 keg, 7 bottles (Samuel Smith)
Food Pub grub & “chop house” food.
Functions and parties.
The Cheese is one of a trio of heritage pubs around Holborn and Fleet Street now in the care of taciturn Yorkshire brewer Samuel Smith — see also Cittie of York (p81) and Princess Louise (p84). In common with them, its drinks range is all own-brand: wines and spirits as well as beers, which include Sam’s one cask ale Old Brewery Bitter, keg wheat beer and organic lager, and decent bottled offerings like Taddy Porter and Oatmeal Stout. This is one of the capital’s best known historic pubs and a well-established call on the tourist itinerary. Its greatest claim to fame as Samuel Johnson’s local is suspect as, although he lived nearby, there is no evidence the opinionated Doctor ever actually drank here, but the building is genuinely old, with parts dating from the late 17th century rebuilding of the area following the Great Fire. Literary figures whose patronage is better attested include Charles Dickens and W B Yeats.
The two oldest rooms are immediately to the left and the right as you enter. The Chop Room on the left, usually reserved for diners, does a good job of recreating the dining area of an 18th century tavern, with heavy wooden furniture and tables, some of them antique. The small room on the right is the most characterful, preserving what might be some of the original wooden panelling, with an impressive fireplace, paintings and a Victorian bar — thankfully the house rule written up over the door, ‘Gentlemen only served’, is no longer enforced. The lack of natural light resulting from the building’s siting in a narrow alley lends a characteristically gloomy aspect. The pub was extended at the back in the 1990s and there’s a warren of other rooms to explore, including upstairs function rooms and the extensive cellar bar, where some of the vaulting is said to survive from a 13th century Carmelite monastery. None of the other rooms is as authentic or cosy as the front pair but there’s some interesting stuff displayed on the walls including a 1970s CAMRA award.
Food is a modern interpretation of “chop house” — steak and kidney pudding, pot roast, pies, roast vegetable Wellington — at prices that would have likely achieved the remarkable feat of rendering Johnson speechless, but are reasonable by today’s standards, especially considering the pub’s tourist cachet.
National Rail City Thameslink, Blackfriars Underground Blackfriars River Blackfriars Cycling NCN4, LCN+7 Walking Jubilee Walkway, link to Thames Path
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