I'd been meaning to go to the Hampshire Hog ever since Ed and the crew from The Engineer took on the lease. The Engineer had been a hugely successful gastro outlet and former home of our current head chef (David Ahern, @corkgourmetguy) so we always had a passing interest in the people from there. It made the national trade headlines when Mitchell & Butler decided to take the pub back into the managed house division. The great and the good from Primrose Hill were up in arms, and the celebrities amongst them ensured the campaign recieved maximum publicity. Go back into managed it did though, so Ed and his team decamped and took on a new lease, this time at the Hampshire Hog.
So when we found ourselves in Hammersmith three weeks after it had opened, it seemed rude not to at least stick our heads around the door and say hello. Our party had made prior plans to eat elsewhere, but nontheless given the place is a "pub and pantry" we decided to bob in for a couple of beers.
The first thing which strikes you when you walk in is that the interior is very white, really white. It's kind of cool/minimalist and on the Wednesday night we visited all of the front area was full. The second thing which struck me is that the bar servery is really small. I think this is because they've utilised the right hand bar as a "pantry" which is a nice idea, looks a bit like a posh deli. If it was me I wouldn't do that, I'd make it back into a bar and do cocktails as well as real ale in jugs, cloudy cider, mulled wine and all that stuff, but that's probably just me. I'd also have some bloke no doubt called Nige' who dropped by to strum away on his acoustic from time to time, but once again it's probably just a personal thing.
Anyway back to real life. On our visit there was a little fella behind the who was fair enough, but plonked in the middle of the serving area was a female member of staff on her laptop. To her right was one of those little blackboard signs with the annoying "No service here" written on it. This was a bit pointless in reality as it was surrounded by empty glasses anyway. There were plenty of other staff working, but despite all of them looking cool enough to feature in a Calvin Klein/Gap ad' (seriously some of them were really uber, uber cool), none of them showed any inclination whatsoever to actually work behind the bar itself. The net result of all this was that a) you couldn't actually get served, and b) although we had been waiting five minutes a newly arrived female punter got served before us. The drinks were reasonably priced and nicely served though when we did get them so no complaints at all there, I think the fella behind the jump just hadn't noticed us, it happens. The "laptop in the middle of the bar" routine though is bollocks frankly, it simply has to be said.
Other than that, I quite liked the gaff but if did feel more like a restaurant with a bar rather than a pub with a restaurant. This maybe intentional for all I know, and I must say the food which was coming out looked great. I would change the "pantry" side of things to address that and to warm the experience up a bit, and I'd also let the staff know that such uber coolness sometimes needs softening with a few more smiles and welcoming looks. Those of us who are uber uncool (and there's a lot of us out there) sometimes like to feel like we're part of the gang, rather than a visitor who is kind of welcome as long as he borrows his cup of sugar and buggers off sharpish kind of way.
We will go back to sample the excellent looking food and to see Ed who's a great guy. It's only just opened and they've had some teething problems with equipment, energy supply and stuff so it could well that this explains the slight lack of wow factor from the bar of things. I think they'll get ti right though, and Chiswick/Hammersmith will be lucky indeed if they end up with another Engineer on their doorstep.
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