The gastropub.

A Victorian pub building, a green awning, mismatched furniture and chalkboard menus: Kate Maxwell's description of the Eagle still fits the whole category. 1 Time Out's shorthand for the format is still "Small plates, an open kitchen, blackboards and scrubbed tables". 4 Harden's editor puts the unflattering version of the same definition on the Pelican: "really an old pub-building converted into a restaurant with the pub bar retained". 12

David Eyre grew up in Mozambique eating bifana, and his version pounds the steak thin, marinates it in red wine, onions, garlic and herbs, flash-fries it and piles it on a soft white bun with the reduced marinade poured back over. 1 The steak sandwich has been on the menu every day since 1991, and it is the only dish that is. 1 The pub also keeps a page of its alumni chefs on its own website, which tells you what kind of institution it thinks it is. 2

Every service gets a new menu. At The Anchor & Hope Mark Taylor found the rule stated as a supply constraint: nothing appears out of season, pink Yorkshire rhubarb in January and asparagus in May, and when it runs out the kitchen moves on. 3 The Devonshire runs the format at the other end of the money. Charlie Carroll and Ashley Palmer-Watts built a wood-ember grill and put a butchery downstairs, and Stefan Chomka's line on the kitchen is that "the prep work and attention back of house would rival any Michelin-starred restaurant". 5 The pub floor seats a hundred and fifty and the three dining rooms another hundred and fifty, and every one of them gets the same menu. 5 At The Harwood Arms the supply chain is a herd: the venison comes off sika deer the chef-owner keeps, and the vegetables off a rooftop garden. 6

Mike Belben owned the Eagle, and he is the reason the second generation exists. He introduced the people who opened The Anchor & Hope, and Mark Taylor names him as the glue for this partnership. 3 Harry Lester came off the Eagle's own stoves into it. 3 Mike Davies cooked at the Anchor & Hope and at Canton Arms before taking The Camberwell Arms, and Sam Andrews came off the Camberwell pass to The Waterman's Arms. 14 The trade keeps its own scoreboard: the Top 50 Gastropubs list has run since 2009 and is voted by an academy rather than by inspectors. 8

The Evening Standard left the whole category out of its fifty best London pubs and named four of them doing it, because "they're not so much places for a quick pint, especially those that become five or six". 13 Time Out lists all four as gastropubs. In Camberwell, where the format is thickest, George Brown and Faddy Velmi call it "the sterile formula of the modern gastropub nightmare". 7 Tom Brown praises Marksman Public House for being the opposite of one: The ultimate London pub. No poncey 'gastropub' bullshit. 11 Oisin Rogers, who runs The Devonshire, is the only one who answers the question directly: "Pubs are chaotic, dark and boozy; restaurants are more organised, codified and delicious. But we're doing both." 5 At The Harwood Arms, come at a busy hour wanting a pint and, in CAMRA's West London branch's words, be prepared for vertical drinking. 6