Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

The Queen Adelaide is one of those swaggeringly confident Victorians you’ll find in the London suburbs, a Grade II-listed pub on a former stagecoach route. It would have been the place for society nobs to fortify themselves with a roast and glass of porter on the way out to their country estates in the nineteenth century, but in recent decades the area’s fortunes have changed.

The tone of the locale isn’t helped on Saturday evenings by its proximity to QPR’s ground. Contemporary footpads and brigands might be encountered – the kind of people whose only dog pedigree certificate reads ‘Break in – make my day’. And the only horses you might see are the
racing gee-gees on a TV screen. Shepherd’s Bush, in other words, is ripe for gentrification.

Which is where Realpubs steps in; it’s one of the few restaurant/bar firms in London that’s doing very nicely at the moment, and with the funds to take on a project like this. It’s not a big-splash gastropub operator like the Martin Brothers (of The Gun, White Swan et al), but since 2002 it has renovated or acquired nine gastropubs. The same magic wand that has recently spruced up The Pembroke in Earl’s Court and in 2007 the Bald-Faced Stag in Finchley has now sorted out the Queen Adelaide, and turned it into a cosy local that’s good for both eating and drinking.

Too many gastropubs forget the ‘pub’ bit of their
designation. Queen Adelaide has a good selection of real ales ranging from the hoppy Harvey’s Sussex Best to Deuchars IPA, to the lip-smacking Edelweiss wheat beer. There’s also a blackboard of forthcoming guest ales, encouraging for suds fans. Wine drinkers are adequately catered for with ten wines by the glass at fair prices, though the overall selection is unlikely to lure serious grape enthusiasts (they’ll fare much better at the Princess Victoria, just a few minutes walk up the road towards Acton).

The main dining area’s attractively laid out, with salvaged furniture, oak concertina doors and boudoir lampshades. A big glass chandelier is a focal point; so is the open kitchen. The menu lists the kind of British-leaning gastropub fare you find everywhere right now, and is none the worse for it.

Lamb rump was the best dish – a good, fist-sized piece of lamb, charred on the outside and nicely rare inside, very well flavoured, and served with mash, roast veg and a red wine sauce. Sea bass was a nice wintry fish dish with a creamy, delicately thyme-flavoured sauce and braised white cabbage. Slow-roasted pork belly was less successful – it was an oddly thin cut, and a bit dry.

These main courses dishes costs £12.50 to £13, which may explain why more people were drinking than eating on our visit. Vegetarian dishes were restricted to starters; a beetroot, toasted pine nut and feta salad was fresh and packed with flavours.

The gentrification of this pub is doubtless a good thing, not least because it fills a gap in a part of town which is increasingly polarised. On one hand, the Dubai-style affluence of the new Westfield shopping mall, the largest of its kind in Europe; on the other, the pound shops and Syrian cafés that kick off the Uxbridge Road. Queen Adelaide occupies the middle ground, and seems aimed squarely at local people.

Time Out London Issue 2011: March 5-11 2009