To be, or not to be, a gastropub? The Baring somehow does both, deliciously

There’s a sound argument that gastropubs are our equivalent of the French bistro or the Italian osteria. An established model, with a distinct social function that’s been a crucial part of the UK’s culinary coming of age. The first gastropubs happened when Margaret Thatcher attacked the “tied house” monopoly of big breweries, leaving lots of vacant licensed premises, with kitchens, in interesting parts of town, around the time that opening a restaurant became socially acceptable again.

You can picture a gastropub as easily as you can a bistro or osteria. The characteristic architecture and fittings of a Victorian boozer, all stately cornicing and dark hardwoods, high ceilings and hard-wearing floors. You can picture the modern paint job, the blackboard and the menu written on it. So much so that it’s become a cliché, and in a way, that’s a pity. Today, with pubs closing ever faster, there are seemingly infinite vacant Victorian boozers in endless suburbs, but the classic gastropub is regarded as a bit low-rent and past its best-before date.

The crisp autumn day prescribed a warm almond financier to finish, which sounds like the smell of a banker getting out of a bath

All of which is useful to know for the complexity of impressions at The Baring, which simultaneously manages to be, and not be, a gastropub.

It’s in a gentrified Victorian quarter in Islington — check. It’s an elegant, curved barroom, with high ceilings and original features — check. It’s got a blackboard menu and, as I’ve sworn never to mention Farrow & Bloody Ball ever again, you’ll have to fill in the last bit yourself. But that’s where it stops. Because, though there’s a bar, it’s clean and smart and curated, rather than stocked. The room is a calm, neutral toned space that will either delight you, or leave you with an itching desire for a Guinness poster, a cardboard box of Scampi Fries and a hanging card of peanuts concealing a 1970s page 3 stunner. This is now officially the first Schrödinger’s pub in London.

Once again, I’ve brought along Ruben, my two-year-old co-reviewer. I figured that a place as central to a neighbourhood as this one should be tested on its tolerance for children and they didn’t disappoint us. There was instant bread and butter. The bread, warm, the butter, invigoratingly salty. I weighed in to pig cheek, smoked eel and daikon, an Asian radish. This was a very creditable block of pig parts, cooked so slowly that the collagen achieved a texture only hitherto seen in lips on Love Island. The combination of pork and fish is a bit like RuPaul’s Drag Race — it lost its ability to shock and is now a weirdly comfortable standard — but this one was accessorised with a feather boa of thin sliced, quick pickled daikon, which elevated it a great deal.

Ruben and I also shared the quail shish, garlic yoghurt and pul biber chilli, which had the tactile elements that suit his fast developing manual skills. I felt they’d made a bold fist of this one. Chef Rob Tecwyn has worked with Ollie Dabbous and at the Bull and Last in Highgate, so he understands both high-end tweezerage and award-winning old-school gastropubbery. Neither of these exactly gives him a mandate for excellent Middle Eastern flavourings and superlative grill-skills, but he does these extraordinarily well.

White beans with Morteau sausage and cavolo nero was a special of the day, which Ruben was served on his special plate mashed to a purée, along with his portion of the two starters and a die-cast model taxi. This runs counter to contemporary restaurant practice, either haute or informal, but I think, as a presentational style, it has enormous potential. To the grown-up in the room, this was perhaps too simple a dish. It relied heavily on the bought-in Morteau, which was brutally over-flavoured, while the beans had lost integrity faster than a cabinet minister.

Salt marsh lamb rump, kofte, aubergine and friggitelli (sic) peppers felt strangely familiar. Though not strictly of the traditional gastropub canon, it had enough of the cues to be an homage. The rump was rare, very juicy and with enough spring to reassure you it had been grilled, rather than poached in a bag. The kofte was a nice touch and the jus, which combined elements of the lamb juices and the pepper leakage, was a blessing on our species. We ordered the grilled hispi cabbage and, of course, a huge serving of chips and garlic mayonnaise. As far as I could tell, Ruben very much enjoyed his chip.

The crisp autumn day prescribed a warm almond financier to finish, which sounds like the smell of a banker getting out of a bath. Here, it came with some intensely spiced poached plums and enough thick cream to clog the arteries of an elephant seal. This, my friends, was a gold standard for desserts. Every pastry chef east of the grand hotels of Mayfair should make pilgrimage.

Predicting how The Baring is going to work is difficult. It’s just too far out of the city centre to be an easy “destination” venue, although the food, in places, is good enough to warrant a trip. It’s a little too smart to be a neighbourhood joint, even in a neighbourhood where you’ll need a million quid for a two-bed terrace. It feels like a polished restaurant, but at times you feel the bones of the pub all round you and it’s discombobulating. The chef is highly talented. The staff passed the Ruben test and are thus officially superheroes . . . or possibly dinosaurs or fairies . . . he’s not sure.

I want to go back to The Baring in a year. Will it have moved to a more populist menu and upped its pub credentials? Will it double down and draw punters from afar? Will it “decide” whether it’s a destination or a local? Should it? Or will we all embrace the new and brilliant uncertainty of Schrödinger’s pub?

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward and email him at tim.hayward@ft.com

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