Clerkenwell has form when it comes to changing how London eats. Three decades ago, a few streets in this small district between Bloomsbury and the City produced the Eagle, Britain's first gastropub, alongside St John's nose-to-tail cooking and Moro's Moorish spice-laden plates. Now the neighbourhood is making another bid for the capital's culinary attention, and the newest name in the story is The Horses on Ray Street.
The pub is the sixth opening from Public House Group, the team behind the Pelican in Notting Hill and the Bull in Charlbury, whose restorations have done much to make serious pub food fashionable again. The building itself is a handsome late-Victorian corner wedge with a colourful past — a rumoured hangout of London's criminal underworld, later run as the Coach. The new team stripped it back and rebuilt it with quiet, unshiny confidence: blond wood, red leather, candlelit booths downstairs, and bottle-glass screens that throw green and yellow light across the bar like sea glass.
That maritime theme is no accident, because seafood is the point. A shucker named Mike, a Maldon native who previously worked with the Haward family of Mersea Island fame, presides over oysters from Scotland, Northumberland and Essex. Small plates include clams and cockles in a vermouth emulsion and crispy squid served seaside-style on brown paper with chilli mayo. Upstairs, the kitchen grills the day's catch from Cornwall: think monkfish on the bone or a char-kissed John Dory, with sides ranging from peppercorn sauce to a langoustine gravy. There's a cheese-and-potato pie and a fish pie for two for anyone not feeling fish-forward, but honestly, why bother.
The details reward a closer look. The woodwork was made by a boat builder in Southampton, the brass door plates were salvaged from a 1950s Belfast-built ocean liner, an oyster mosaic hides in the lavatory floor, and Delft-style seafood tiles run along the base of the bar. The layout is genuinely two venues in one: a casual bar below for a pint and snacks like mackerel on toast or a pork pie, and an intimate dining room above with under a dozen tables, a curved banquette and a sunny corner booth that's arguably the best seat in the house. A third floor adds an open kitchen, chef's counter, a marble group table and a private-hire room under the rafters.
The beer list leans independent and British — Braybrooke and Verdant among them — alongside Guinness and cocktails. Walk-ins work fine downstairs; book ahead if you want the full seafood dinner.
Why it matters: The Horses fits squarely into the Clerkenwell wave alongside Sessions Arts Club, Bouchon Racine and Vesper, and it sits a three-minute stroll from the historic Eagle. If you're in London for a weekend of eating well, this stretch of Ray Street alone could fill an evening — a pint and half a dozen oysters downstairs, then a proper catch-of-the-day dinner upstairs. Less gastropub, more mermaid, as the reviewer put it: a great pub and a great restaurant stitched together.
Review via Suitcase Magazine.
