Kelly Runs the Prettiest Small Pub in St James's
A Grade II Victorian gin palace on Duke of York Street with four Fuller's casks, a chicken pie, and no room to sit down at six.
The mirrors do the work before the beer does. Brilliant-cut frosted glass wraps the room at head height, catching the pendant light and throwing it back doubled, so a pub that seats maybe a dozen people reads as somewhere much larger and much older than the address suggests. The carved mahogany is the other half of the trick. Duke of York Street is a two-minute cut through St James's between Jermyn Street and Piccadilly, and the Red Lion has stood on it as one of the surviving small Victorian gin palaces in a part of London that mostly tore its versions down.
It is a Fuller's pub, which fixes what the pumps pour and sets the register. Kelly runs the room. The food is short and pubby — toasties, Mr Barrick's pork pie at £7.95, sourdough with Nocellara olives at £6.95 — and the drinks list runs from four cask ales through wines to champagne that is priced with more restraint than the postcode would predict. The building is the product. The Architectural Review once called it a perfect example of the small Victorian gin palace at its best, and nothing since has argued with that.
One of the prettiest small pubs in London, priced like a Fuller's local and packed wall-to-wall with suits by one.
Editorial Deep
Four Fuller's casks cover the bar: London Pride, ESB, Chiswick and Gale's Seafarers. That is the range, and the range is deliberate — this is a Fuller's tied house pouring Fuller's beer, kept well, in the format the building was built for. Order the Chiswick if you want the lightest of the four and the one that rewards a second pint; the ESB if you want the pub to work harder for you. The Seafarers drinks softer than either and suits an afternoon.
Cut-glass mirrors on every wall, carved mahogany around the bar, a single island counter in the middle of the main room and a snug at the back that seats about four people if they are friendly. The ceiling is low, the lighting is warm pendants and reflected mirror-light, and the sound is conversation off hard surfaces rather than any music the room is trying to push. It is one of the prettiest small pubs in central London, and the Architectural Review compliment about the small Victorian gin palace at its best is not marketing — it is what you are standing inside.
Suits from noon to two, more suits from six to eight, and a mixed St James's crowd of gallery staff, Jermyn Street shoppers and the occasional tourist who has read the right guidebook in between. The lunchtime crowd is loud and fast and drinks two pints in forty minutes; the after-work crowd stays longer and spills onto the pavement. Mid-afternoon between three and five is when the room belongs to whoever wants it, and that is the version of the pub worth planning around. The crowd is not the product here — the building is — but at peak the volume works against the room the mirrors are trying to make.
Skip the chicken pie at peak. A kitchen running out of a pub this size at its busiest hour is not the kitchen to trust with a pastry crust — the pie holds up off-peak and suffers when the room is full. Come off-peak for food or come for drinks only. The champagne, priced under the going West End rate, is the value play if the occasion asks for it — a bottle here costs meaningfully less than the same label three streets away.
Come back on a weekday in late autumn, around four in the afternoon, when the light outside has already gone and the mirrors take over. That is the version of the Red Lion worth building a stop around — a pint of Chiswick, the snug if it is free, and a quiet half hour before the after-work rush arrives. It is not a night that ends here; the room is too small and the last-orders bell too firm for that. Skip it if you want to sit down at seven, and skip it if a long session with a group of six is the plan. Bring one other person, come early, leave before the suits come back.
Order this
Drink this.
A pint of Fuller's Chiswick at the island bar, mid-afternoon
“Go for the room and the cask. Go off-peak or don't bother sitting.”
One of the prettiest small pubs in central London, run properly as a Fuller's tied house with four well-kept casks and champagne priced under the going West End rate. The room is the product — brilliant-cut mirrors, carved mahogany, an island bar, a mirrored back snug — and it is worth a specific detour if you can time it around the two daily rushes. Go mid-afternoon on a weekday, order the Chiswick, take the snug if it is free. Skip it at one and skip it at seven. If you want to sit down and have a real dinner, Bouchon Racine and Noble Rot are the room to book instead; the Red Lion is a landmark pint stop, not a landing spot for the night.
The Verdict
