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Description: An "always-welcoming" gastropub "gem", "in the heart of Canonbury"; it offers an unusually "delicious" menu, which is "heavy on meat and traditional British fare".
Food:
Service:
Ambience: 
Phone: 020 7354 2975
Website: http://www.marquesstavern.co.uk
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Payment options:
Difficult space to make work: Marquess Tavern
When it comes to the Marquess, no one can say my household hasn’t tried. We’ve frequented it in all its incarnations. My husband used to take my late father there to see one of the finest old gin palaces in London and persuade a sceptical northerner that southerners could serve a good beer. Then it went gastro on us, a blessing for the distaff side of the family which prefers to eat while it drinks.
So last year we took my old philosophy tutor who was celebrating his professorship. We liked the ambience and some of the food. But it came out, as the Professor mercilessly declared, at beta- plus. The menu then was very gizzardy: full of devilled this and pork pie and pickles: the macho end of British food.Now it is has been re-re-launched with an extended and less gritty menu, so back we trooped, this time for the mother-in-law’s birthday supper.
It’s a difficult space to make work, being very high and thus extremely clattery. Even with only a few tables taken, the sound reverberates. It’s also a bit dark unless you are directly under the chandeliers — I take the point that it’s a pub not a restaurant, but we need a bit of illumination in these gloomy times before we all succumb to SAD syndrome.
Off we got to a brilliant Usain Bolt start. I ordered artichoke with duck egg mayonnaise, on the long-held female principle that you should always have what you can’t bear to prepare yourself.The result was grade-A artichokery, with its rich, sinful accompaniment and plaudits from the guest of honour for sprats. Borscht scored medium.
There is obviously a gremlin who ensures when three people contemplate a menu, they often defy probability and decide they want the same thing. It felt like partridge, bacon and cabbage night — with a smooth Valpolicella to help it down.
Mistake — at least for me. It arrived suspiciously baked. There is a difference between cooking birds and turboblasting them to death. It had also had a salt overload that has probably taken years off our lives.
Gastropub chefs do seem alarmingly fond of the salt cellar. Salty bacon, salty cabbage and very salty game chips: the poor partridge was so surrounded by sodium chloride that such flavours that had resisted the cooking never stood a chance.
To finish, figs with black pepper for pudding were a nice touch: the others opted for a blueberry sorbet which sounded healthy but was in fact a terrible gloop that tasted like jam.
Still, I suspect there are some good things lurking on this menu. The suppliers are excellent. Steve Hatt provides the fish — so why offer only mackerel as a main course fish? The Speyside beef, which a neighbouring table were devouring with appreciation, was heralded as “lovingly reared” (as we now say of the poor beasts we still want to kill and eat).
Service was obliging throughout and at £110 for three people and three courses (without service), it should be a real credit crunch tip for Islington gentlefolk fallen on hard times. Naughtily they have raised the cost of the cheeseboard from a bargain £3 a head last year to a mad £9, which feels ungenerous.
It needs a few menu tweaks to get it absolutely right, some corner lamps and the kitchen salt allocation halved. I might even go back for the artichokes, as long as it isn’t with someone who wants to tell me how much they liked it when it was still just a pub.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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I agree with Matthew, the Marquess never fails to impress me.
Amazing food at pub prices set in a beautiful beautiful pub. A PUB for god's sake!!! What the hell kind of pub has a dining room like the Marquess?
I think the reviewer needs to get her facts right to, the fish hasn't come from Steve Hatt in over a year and the cheese board is priced accordingly because it comes from La Fromagere the best cheese store in town. If she's had bothered to ask, any of the waiters would have told her that.
Actually I would advise anyone as I have done, ask about the provenance of the ingredients. I guarantee you will not give the prices a second thought, it is top top quality at pub prices.
You don't get many Grouse or Brown River Trout on offer in normal pubs though.
- Rosanna Walsh, London, Islington
I think salt is crucial to a good tasting dish and applaud the chef for his liberal shake. I slipped in for dinner at The Marquess last night and was extremely impressed. I urge Londoners far and wide to follow suit.
- Matthew Rendall, Islington, London
