Six Jersey Rocks and a Pint of Guinness
Tom Conran's 1995 Notting Hill room still runs on oysters, stout, and a downstairs saloon bar where you cannot book a table just to drink.
Thirty-one years on, the downstairs saloon bar is still the thing. The upstairs Dining Room takes reservations and does Sunday lunch properly, but the saloon is where the pub lives: dark wood, old Guinness ads, a Celtic tilt to everything, and a bar staff that has been shucking oysters and pouring stout at the same address for longer than most of Notting Hill's current openings have been trading.
The Cow invented the London gastropub in 1995 and still pours one of the best pints of Guinness in the city.
Editorial Deep
The pub has enough of a Celtic affect — old ads, hand-painted signs, a bar that treats the pour with the two-stage patience it needs — that stout is the honest choice here, not the contrarian one. It ranks among the best pints in the city, and the room's regulars agree by ordering nothing else.
At one on a Wednesday the saloon is a lunch room — light through the front windows, a few solo pints, the shucker working the counter unhurried, someone eating a whole Dorset crab out of its shell with aioli and a napkin. By eight the same room is darker, louder, closer; the booths at the back fill with fours doing fish stew and the second pint, and the stools at the counter turn over on oyster orders rather than long sits.
The crowd is Notting Hill locals plus the people who have been coming to The Cow since it opened, which is a specific demographic — W11 residents on their third decade of Saturday-lunch habit, plus a rotating younger set that inherited the Kate-Moss-in-the-noughties tilt of the room. It runs friendly rather than posey, and the room's volume rises with the pint count rather than the door policy. Peak is Saturday lunch into the afternoon and Sunday into the roast sitting upstairs; a Tuesday night is quiet enough to get a counter stool without waiting.
The seafood platters can take over the bill.
This is the best version of a 1995 London gastropub still doing the job it invented, and the night to return for is a walk-in Saturday lunch at the downstairs counter: two hours, three pints, a dozen oysters, the fish stew, banoffee pie to finish. Anyone hoping to book a stool for drinks-only will bounce off the door policy and should skip it — reservations here are for diners, and the saloon bar takes walk-ins only. Come for that; don't come expecting a cocktail bar or a scene.
Order this
Drink this.
The Cow Special — six Jersey Rock oysters and a pint of Guinness
“The saloon bar Tom Conran opened in 1995 still pours a top-tier pint and shucks oysters to match.”
Thirty-one years on, The Cow is still the London gastropub template — a downstairs saloon bar that takes walk-ins only, one of the better pints of Guinness in the city, and Jersey Rock oysters shucked at the counter. Order the Cow Special, sit at the bar, don't come for cocktails.
The Verdict
