‘This is a masterclass in hospitality’

The soul of The Devonshire is purged. Founded in 1793, the building must have writhed and squirmed as it survived the Second World War only to suffer a worse fate as a succession of chains wrestled within its walls.

But now, defibrillated and cleansed, The Devonshire is once again an enriching feeding and drinking haunt. The place is like an ocean-going liner, HMS Devonshire, with engine rooms, store rooms filled with wood fuel, kitchens, public bars, dining rooms and other social spaces. It’s a heaving mass of hospitality and, such is the effect of the design, furniture and the most extraordinarily massive wood-fired oven, one can’t imagine it has ever been anything other than it is today.

These things didn’t just happen by accident. They are down to a combination of wise thinking by the landlord – who must have been tempted to go with some multinational restaurant empire with an impressive balance sheet – and the three lads who successfully pitched for the site.

Mind you, those lads have quite some pedigree. Charlie Carroll founded the Flat Iron restaurant business, Ashley Palmer-watts was once Heston Blumenthal’s right-hand man, and Oisín Rogers is one of the capital’s best-known pub managers.

So you can’t blame us critics for piling into this place with unanimous praise. For this is what can happen with a triumvirate who don’t just understand but love those three cornerstones of ingredients, cooking and hospitality.

The place works like this: there’s a bar on the ground floor, which heaves every day of the week. There’s a quieter, sometimes private, sometimes live-music-focused, space at the back. In the basement there’s a large cold room stacked with beef carcasses worked on by the in-house butcher, while across the building are kitchens and serving corners, the upper floors home to a variety of dining rooms, all joyfully jam-packed.

And what is the visionary, jaw-dropping, groundbreaking menu concept enticing everyone in? Here’s the £29 set menu on the day I went: prawn and langoustine cocktail; sirloin steak, chips and béarnaise sauce; and sticky toffee pudding. Which, doubtless, would leave a thousand pub landlords scratching their heads and wondering why their pub with the same menu is about to slip into receivership. Well, as with jokes, it’s the way you tell ’em (and, OK, it’s slap bang in the middle of London).

The menus are handwritten, clear and measured. The meat is exceptional, the wood-fired oven the largest such weapon I have ever seen, the decor classic and unobtrusive, the service skilled and smart and old-school, and even the loos are traditional, furnished with Thomas Crapper porcelain.

But the food itself is delivered with the exceptional care and skill of head chef Jamie Guy, which means that (from the à la carte menu) my pea and ham soup sung with the scent of fresh peas (some of which were retained whole for added texture), while my pal Genevieve’s scallops came with gloriously chunky lardons, a generous pile of breadcrumbs and the most moppable-uppable buttery sauce imaginable. My pork chop was a hymn to the Iberian pig, the salad colourful and crunchy, the chips crisp and perfect, and her fillet of halibut lovely and tender. We shared a bread and butter pudding, soft and sweet with a top like crème brûlée.

The Devonshire is a masterclass in hospitality. Forget catering management college, just go there for lunch.

The meat is exceptional, the wood-fired oven the largest such weapon I have ever seen, the service old-school