Fantasy unfulfilled
d i f f e re n t menu. It all f e e l s qu i t e cavernous, with lots of shiny wood panelling, mix and match furniture and elaborate f i l a me n t b u l b lighting arrangements. But the real surprise is still stepping outside and seeing just how much garden space it has for a London pub.
There’s a giant horse chestnut, now flowering beautifully — if doomed later to brown off sadly, as nearly all in London now do — and a shrubby border along one side with some sharply clipped Lshaped hedges of purple beech breaking up the space. The furniture ranges from an area packed like a chessboard with some dark rattan boxy arrangements to more randomly scattered traditional pub benches, chairs and tables. Unfortunately, this garden is still mostly surfaced with ugly concrete slabs and astroturf — but the sky is big and there’s the occasional swift and shrieking parakeet zooming around overhead.ead. Air!
It’s the main attraction,, this garden. It’s said that Georgege Orwell drafted some off 1984 here, perhaps under this very chestnut tree. So how great it would be to be able to recommend this relaunch wholeheartedly. We can’t. Rogers, the full Irishman, a sometime dining companion of Fay Maschler in these pages, enjoyed a great reputation at The Ship but can’t be said yet to have got on top of this challenge. We tried the restaurant first. From the starters, clams in garlic andan lemon butter with parsley cornbreadcornb (£8) were much the mostmo enjoyable dish, salty but satisfying,sa going well with the naturallyn sweet slices of