The Pub Is Dead, Long Live the Pub!
Although it is a hot summer’s day—27° Celsius, warm for London, even in July—the handsome wood-panelled dining room of the Bull & Last (doubles from `15,696; entrées `1,660–`3,547; thebullandlast.co.uk) is at full socially-distanced capacity. The pub’s Sunday roast is consistently voted one of the best in London, and weekends are booked out with neighbourhood families, diners from further afield, and even the odd celebrity (writer Julian Barnes and actors Damian Lewis and Juliet Stevenson are all regulars). Everyone seems to be drinking pints of India pale ale and ordering Gloucester Old Spots pork belly and sirloin of shorthorn beef accompanied by airy puffs of Yorkshire pudding.
The pub, situated opposite the wild expanses of Hampstead Heath, has been one of north London’s prime culinary destinations ever since co-owners Joe Swiers and Ollie Pudney—who’s also the chef—got the keys in 2008. But, like most things in this city, the Bull & Last’s history goes back much further: it was first mentioned in court records in 1721, and would at the time have been a coaching inn on the road to central London—a place for coachmen and their passengers to spend the night before setting off on the last leg of their journey.
Central London may no longer be a horse-drawn-coach journey away, but this corner of the city was nonetheless in need of stylish accommodations. The first floor of the pub, a high-ceilinged dining room presided over
