“I Tried Red Lion & Sun, The 3rd Best Gastro Pub In The UK, Here’s What I Honestly Thought”
The UK’s Top 50 Gastropub list, which is released every year, is, to me, a simple framework of where I might like to eat next time I go out. I am not usually one for a stuffy, Michelin-level, must-order-ten-plates-between-you kind of thing. As much as that’s quite a treat now and then, my heart lies within a relaxed dining room, perhaps in a restaurant with a smoking section, perhaps *cough cough* the pub. Most curious to me on this year’s top 5 was The Red Lion & Sun, coming in at Bronze.
I always say this, but the simplest dishes prove the best cooks, the best menus, the best minds. It could not get simpler here…
Mallory, Junior Food & Drink Editor
What sets it apart
What sets this place apart is exactly what makes it fit in. It is relaxed, no dress code, no pressure. Paper menus and pew benches, wooden tables and outdoor heaters. At 1pm on a Thursday, it is heaving with intergenerational tables, catch-ups over bread and beer. At 3pm, it is empty, all having filed out for school pick up. At 5, it fills again.
A pub that ebbs and flows like the tide.
What will stick with me most is the smell. I grew up calling a small coastal town in Maine (USA) home. That town and all its establishments smell of weathered wood and muddy wellies, of lit furnaces and buttered bread, mussels and lobster and beer. The Red Lion & Sun smells like home. It’s a rural pub in London, a place to take the dog after a long walk, to get stuck in for hours, to get on a first-name basis with the staff, waving goodbye whilst finally braving the windy weather to head out. I can only imagine how hard it’d be to leave with the sun out.
It’s a rural pub in London, a place to take the dog after a long walk, to get stuck in for hours, to get on a first-name basis with the staff, waving goodbye whilst finally braving the windy weather to head out.
What we ordered
After all that glowing and reminiscing on how much this place felt like a home, the food is even better than the air within it.
We began with bread and olives. An obvious call in nearly every restaurant. Whilst bread is usually the winner of this recurring duo, with olives every so often being an unremarkable pastime for your hands as you await the main course, the olives at The Red Lion & Sun were, in every sense of the word, remarkable. Meaty, tender, and bordering on the size of a pinecone! Maybe that’s hyperbole, but a girl can dream.
We bonded with Paulo while we waited for the rest, using empty shells to pick out the last of the mussels and dancing through the most exciting wine list I’ve seen in a pub, watching his eyes twinkle as he boasted of bottles. “It’s a list of all the glasses Heath would want to drink himself,” he said, “and it changes all the time!” How exciting.
It is speaking to people like this in places like this when I feel like I learn the most. Casual conversations about how special a bottle or dish is, with no pressure to perform or pass.
We decided on a phenomenal bottle which he pushed, one I’d not had before, one perhaps many people have not had before, a Giuseppe Quintarelli ‘Bianco Secco’. Glorious. It is speaking to people like this in places like this when I feel like I learn the most. Casual conversations about how special a bottle or dish is, with no pressure to perform or pass. This was such a perfect pair for both dark and white meat. A win for Paulo. A win for me.
The pork chop came and went, an extraordinarily large slab whose fat was crispy and smooth, charred and filling. I felt like the first bite was a renewal of my vows to the pork chop. “I’ll never call you boring again!” I swore, reminding myself of just how much this forgotten cut has to give even alongside the also-fained boring sides of mash and cabbage. It’s not boring at all if cared for.
The only place anything could get any better is right here, in the homely halls of The Red Lion & Sun.
Then, lemon sole over green beans and potatoes. It couldn’t get any better. Oh wait, sticky toffee pudding was just hot enough, just fluffy enough, and the ice cream was vanilla, not some experimental flavour featuring a botanical herb (time and place). The only place anything could get any better is right here, in the homely halls of The Red Lion & Sun.
The verdict
I always say this, but the simplest dishes prove the best cooks, the best menus, the best minds. It could not get simpler here, and gastropubs should be just that. Simple. The most complicated thing about The Red Lion & Sun is that they serve frozen margaritas, and nobody ever said they didn’t back a frozen margarita. It was evident in the crowd, in the location, in the menu, in the decor, in the gravies and the oils, and in the staff; to go to The Red Lion & Sun is to go home.
It was evident in the crowd, in the location, in the menu, in the decor, in the gravies and the oils, and in the staff; to go to The Red Lion & Sun is to go home.
Where: 25 North Rd, London N6 4BE
Website: www.theredlionandsun.com
