The Hour Glass: Hail the new simplicity

The Hour Glass is just what is needed: food spins on an axis of ingredients in their prime, prices are reasonable, and wines are marked up with modesty, says a happy Fay Maschler
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Fay Maschler14 December 2017

On his Twitter account Luke Mackay describes himself as “shopkeeper/pub bloke”. The shop is the ace deli/fishmonger/butcher/grocer Brompton Food Market in Thurloe Place, which he runs with his business partner David Turcan; the pub is The Hour Glass nearby on Brompton Road that opened in their care a few weeks ago. In July this year Mackay announced online: “So we have a kitchen and bar now. Just need a GM with bonhomie and wit and a chef who isn’t a dick.” He gets his way.

Mackay is an unusual animal, a cook who understands rather well the great scheme of things and can express it cogently. In a blog on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth inveighing against an incident of customer bullying by Michelin-starred chefs, he writes furiously, “It’s cooking. I do it, you do it and my 90-year-old nan does. It’s just cooking.” In another piece he hopes the “the next foodie fad is less about the chef and more about the customer”. As you might imagine, this bodes well for punters both at the shop where there is a back garden for eating (now with blankets to wrap up in) and at the pub.

The first meal is lunch with my friend Caroline who spends quite a lot of her time in Dorset. “This feels like a country pub,” she says, approvingly. We are sitting upstairs in the long and narrow dining room (the downstairs bar unsurprisingly is long and narrow too). Random wood panelling, apparently mostly doors recycled from local churches, lines the interior wall. Seats at the back, upholstered in button-back turquoise blue leather, are beneath panels of distressed mirror. Light pours through the windows. And if you peer around tall stacks of white plates, the kitchen is on view at one end.

The stated philosophy of chef Tim Parsons — “the best-tasting ingredients left alone” — chimes with the owners’ approach but undersells his own skills, insight and tenderness. We both start with items from quite a long list of bar snacks, all priced at £4.50. Rare breed Cumberland Scotch egg has punchy sausage meat with a carapace of crisp crumbs encasing egg with a molten centre, served with a little salad as well dressed as you would expect in the area. I discover later that it will not be entered for the annual Scotch Egg Challenge held this year at The Canonbury in Islington, but as Marlon Brando would almost certainly have said, it “coulda been a contender”.

Whipped cod’s roe adorned with a string of glassy beads of salmon roe, served with sourdough toast and raw fennel, blurs the line between bar snack and first course, rejecting the machismo of the former, embracing the thoughtful delicacy that can distinguish the latter. The main course of feathered game pie (duck and partridge) is praised for its tender meat and intoxicatingly reduced wine-based sauce. Mackerel fillet almost recklessly charred — but sparklingly fresh and supple enough to deal with it — is accompanied by a heap of soft, sweet, roasted, peeled yellow peppers and sprigs of coriander. I am in a lady-who-lunches mood and it is perfect.

Deceptively simple: wood pigeon with black pudding, toasted hazlenuts and pickled quince Leyla Kazim
Leyla Kazim

On an evening Reg and I squeeze past drinkers watching rugby and once upstairs decide on rare breed herb and pancetta sausage roll (him), which is as assertive as the Scotch egg but interestingly different — obviously pastry plays a part — and crab toast with sea vegetables (me). Large pieces of crabmeat attractively skimpily dressed in mayonnaise are offset, and also flattered, by briny samphire.

Breast of lamb roasted hard to a dark colour and crisp exterior is accompanied by something described as “potch”. Research later reveals a detailed recipe for this slow burn of vegetables in Richard Llewellyn’s classic How Green Was My Valley. The green vegetable accompaniment presented in the restaurant bears almost no resemblance but maybe there is a trace of Welsh potch in the surrounding juices. Fish and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce is everything you want the dish to be, including chips that are a marvel of frying and an ironic (but practical) muslin outfit for the lemon half.

The stated philosophy of chef Tim Parsons — “the best-tasting ingredients left alone” — chimes with the owners’ approach but undersells his own skills, insight and tenderness.

Buttermilk pudding — pannacotta by an English name — comes with stewed damsons and biscuits, which is just lovely, as is blackberry frangipane served with double cream. We love our waitress Connie. We are happy.

Regular readers might think I am going soft in the head, so generous am I with stars recently, but The Hour Glass in its deceptive simplicity is just what is needed. A pub that hasn’t been turned into flats, the food spins on an axis of ingredients in their prime, prices are reasonable, wines are marked up with modesty — and I dare say the beers are well chosen.

And I am a sucker for Mackay’s writing. In a rant against the antics of celebrity chefs, he says about Gordon Ramsay’s choice of music on Desert Island Discs, “If it were any more beige it would be hummus”.

279-283 Brompton Road, SW3 (020 7581 2497, hourglasspub.co.uk). Mon-Sat noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm. Sun noon-3pm. Bar food all day from noon. A restaurant meal with wine for two, about £82 excluding service.

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