The Travel Critic

If the ancient gods ever convened on a cloud somewhere above W11 and announced, “Right, let’s design the world’s most implausibly perfect winter pub,” they would, naturally, bicker for a bit; Zeus insisting on thunderbolts behind the bar, Hera wanting better cushions, Dionysus demanding bottomless wine; before finally agreeing to conjure The Pelican, Notting Hill. And honestly, walking in on a crisp December lunchtime, while everyone else is hunched under fluorescent tubes in offices they hate, feels almost illegal. Deliciously illegal. Like truancy for adults with expense accounts.

There is something indecently thrilling about going to the pub in work hours. It’s the adult equivalent of sneaking out of double maths, except now you’re wearing a blazer, murmuring about Q4 projections, and pretending this is “client relationship building” rather than an extended flirtation with lunchtime hedonism. The Pelican encourages this misbehaviour. It’s practically designed for it. You step through the door and the world outside evaporates: replaced by a sort of rustic chic heaven with a roaring, real fireplace, not the pretend gas kind that looks like a screensaver for people with no imagination, and lighting so perfectly dim a Hollywood cinematographer would weep. Dim enough to appear effortlessly cool, bright enough to read the menu, and, best of all, forgiving enough to conceal the suspicion that you, personally, might not be attractive enough to justify existing in Notting Hill at all.

The staff glide about with the kind of friendly ease that makes you question your own upbringing. Efficient without stiffness, kind without cloying, and suspiciously good-looking in that way London hospitality recently specialised in; a sort of “Did you used to model for Acne Studios?” aesthetic. Disappointingly beautiful, frankly, but so warm you forgive them instantly.

We took the private dining room upstairs, which sounds corporate, and indeed was ostensibly for work, though calling it a work client lunch feels like claiming you go to the Savoy to check your emails. It’s beautiful up there; a room that whispers money without shouting it, with soft colours and the faint aroma of wood smoke drifting up like a promise. Sitting in such surroundings, in such a pub, during office hours, and not paying personally? I’m not convinced mortals are supposed to experience joy of this magnitude. You half-expect HMRC to burst through the door and confiscate the pudding.

And then the food arrives, not the usual sad, anaemic concept of sharing plates, those limp, over-sauced tapas knock-offs designed for people who can’t commit. No. These are proper sharing plates. Grand, generous, noble slabs of things cooked with swagger.

A great hunk of salmon so perfectly judged you consider writing a thank-you letter to the fish. Bone-in sirloin that makes you briefly contemplate abandoning all professional responsibilities to run away with it. Celeriac, yes, the shy root vegetable usually consigned to soups made by people on detoxes, but here transformed into something almost operatic. It tastes like no celeriac you’ve ever known. You suddenly understand how Michelin stars happen: someone accidentally makes a vegetable taste better than the main event.

And the chocolate mousse. Good lord. A mousse with such a violently high cocoa percentage that you question your whole relationship with chocolate to date. Have you ever truly eaten chocolate before? Or was it all just sweet, brown placebo? This stuff hits like a theological revelation.

Overseeing all this is Max, the GM, who runs the place with the calm, charismatic authority of a ringmaster who knows the lions will never eat him. Warm, sharp, present, and possessed of that rare talent: making you feel as though you are the most important person in the pub, despite the fact that absolutely everyone else is thinking the same thing.

By the time we had to leave, I’d decided two things:

1. I never wanted to leave.

2. I should probably buy a house next door. Or rather, inside it. Ideally above the bar, so I could descend each morning like some benevolent local spirit smelling faintly of embers and chocolate mousse.

Because The Pelican isn’t just a pub. It’s the pub you’d design if you were allowed one perfect winter wish. A place where work dissolves, calories don’t count, lighting forgives, and time slows itself in quiet admiration.

Frankly, if they’d offered me a set of keys, I’d still be there.