My youngest sister, newly 18, likes Lana Del Rey and mojitos and is about to move to Bristol to train as a nurse, though not before she flies off to southern Spain for some sort of all-inclusive holiday. Dear lord. But where to take her in London? A sunny rooftop for cocktails? Scarfes Bar at the Rosewood hotel to educate her as to the importance of a properly made Hemingway daiquiri (the best in town is at Scarfes)?
Don’t be silly. The answer is a classic boozer; somewhere referred to by ironic types as “an old man pub” with a darts board and a diligent selection of refreshing ales.
And so off we go to The Barley Mow in Marylebone, one of the most beautiful pubs in London, still independently owned and all the better for it. It was founded in 1791 and today boasts a frontage of a rich and endearing red, with colourful flowers as turrets above gold lettering, the sort to inspire visiting Americans to declare, “Oh look, so cute, it’s like the Victorian times!” They would all enjoy the live music.
Inside, charm abounds. Green banquettes are bookended by tones of dark wood; beer signs cover the walls in neat patterns; high stools line the bar and some of them might be hosting elegantly suited men and fancy ladies and everyone in between.
The lights are dim(ish), the glass embellished, the back bar chocka with spirits and everything is curved and angled as stories of more romantic times. There is a smell that exists only in a proper pub: part-pie with gravy, part-the fading grace of a million cigarettes, part-however many dropped shots of rum as quiz teams rise and fall with raucous exclamation.
Here she is, my sister, a country mouse of modest wisdom. She is sitting at a low table and sipping half a cider. All about her the world flows. Chatter moves from the Olympics to the weather while light rolls in through the windows. The pub might not be her sort of place, but one day it will be, of that I have no doubt. You grow into these places, after all. And, not that it matters much, I have my Guinness. It is £7. I should berate the price but I know full well the power that is Diageo.
The pay off is dinner nearby, at Jikoni, an Asian fusion restaurant owned by the chef Ravinder Bhogal that does fine prawn scotch eggs and crispy kale chaat. And here my sister is rewarded with fruity cocktails; we share one flavoured with apricots and another with lemon and saffron. Then the bartender, on learning of her love of mojitos, conjures one up off-menu. It is hospitality at its best, London in the sunshine, and the day an early memory for a little nurse just starting to find her way.
