TOM PARKER BOWLES reviews The Hero, a West London pub abuzz with diners and drinkers – and the food gets four stars By Tom Parker Bowles For You Magazine Published: 12:00 BST, 15 June 2024 | Updated: 12:00 BST, 15 June 2024 e-mail View comments The Hero of Maida Vale did, a few years back, enjoy a brief renaissance when the kitchen was taken over by Henry Harris. But he left to open the splendid Bouchon Racine, and the pub, in terms of food at least, sank back into inoffensive mediocrity. It closed earlier this year and has since been taken over by Phil Winser and James Gummer, the team behind Notting Hill’s The Pelican and, in the Cotswolds, The Bull, in Charlbury.
And now, just a couple of weeks after reopening, the place is abuzz once more, diners and drinkers spilling out into the street on the balmiest of Monday nights. There’s a grill room upstairs, but that’s not open for a few weeks, so we sit in the corner of the ground-floor pub, a gentle breeze wafting through the open doors. ‘Just two weeks after reopening, the place is abuzz once more,’ says Tom.
Above: scotch egg, fish pie and buttery asparagus We eat raw vegetables grown on their farm in Charlbury, the first thrust of late spring – tiny carrots, peas, radishes with their peppery leaves and lettuce, all dipped in a ‘garden dressing’ made from carrot tops and herb clippings, as lushly fertile as the Green Man. There’s a three-cheese and Branston toastie, burnished and oozing, every bit the equ.
