Dining Out 026: The Clock House Tavern
Dinner in Peckham.
I have been a bit of a homebird over the past little while, so this week’s Dining Out is about another Peckham pub. The newly reopened Clock House Tavern, near the top of the Rye as you go towards the Herne, has been given a glamorous refit – very tasteful in a millennial way, lovely curved bar, lots of dark green paint, wood panelling, the business – just in time to become a place for locals (me) to model their autumn jumpers and drink between two and six Guinness on a school night.
As part of the revamp, the pub also has a very nice new dining room, and a menu by Gengelly’s, who make really good pub food. They also run the show at the Earl of Derby near Skehan’s – and as such are the purveyors of the only Sunday roast in London I will wilfully endorse – and the food selection consists of lots of trendy-but-crowd-pleasing bits which lean towards a sit-down vibe. Considering the fact that I will always be hitting a brand new pub in walking distance from my home harder than one member of Ablisa smacking the other one in the face during the X Factor live auditions, I stuck my head in recently, with my pal Elise, to see what the craic was.
The pub’s smoking area is out at the front, and it’s really big, with plenty of tables for groups (I feel like it’s very rare you see a properly massive smoking area that actually has enough space but this one does). As you go inside, you’re greeted immediately by that rounded bar and loads of cosy-feeling wood, and if you do happen to be eating, chances are you’ll be sitting inside the also surprisingly big dining room.
Like the rest of the place, the dining room has a warm ambience and the food follows suit – largely, what’s on offer are crowd-pleasing dishes with slightly fancy twists. Elise and I picked out an anchovy and olive plate, croquettes, a crab flatbread from the menu’s dedicated flatbreads section, plus, of course, that eternal titan of the pub menu: the burger.
While pub menus may be somewhat dictated by trends (see: those flatbreads), a burger never goes out of fashion, and the Gengelly’s one is very good. I have mentioned pub burgers a lot in the past few weeks – largely because I have been advocating for other types of pub food, apologies to burgers – so it feels only fair that this week, at my last pub for a while now, at least, I actually engage with one on its own terms.
In terms of burger taxonomy, the Gengelly’s burger at The Clock House Tavern is probably what I’d call a thick smashburger, which means that in practice it’s got a bit more oomph – a bit more to it – than I would typically expect from one of these things. I tend in general to find smashburgers a little bit thin – flaccid? – but when this one came to the table I was surprised. The patty was still chunky, as though it had only been half smashed rather than totally flattened down on the grill, and the brioche was shining under the brand new restaurant lights as though highlighter powder had been applied directly to it.
When I picked the burger up, the cheese (American*) was clinging to the meat and the bread in that sort of visceral, Eating with Tod way that I hate seeing on video but that, in person, you really do just have to succumb to. The bun was substantial enough to contain everything inside it, and the actual bite itself was, again, chunkier and juicier than you might expect from your typical smash – but I really liked that about it.
It was a good reminder of how utilitarian a food a burger is in the pub (of all the menu items on the pub’s opening night, it was burgers that were flying out of the kitchen much more than anything else). You’re always going to enjoy it, it’s always going to go with what you’re drinking, and though I may advocate for greater experimentation in the rarified field of Things We Slap In Between Bread to Accompany a Pint, I do admit that it’s hard to say no to a simple but slickly executed burg.
Outside of the main event, we ordered something that was labelled on the menu as “Gildas” (quote marks included), and which turned out to be a plate of anchovies with olives, guindillas and vinegar. It made for a really nice aperitif – though I will be honest I’d kind of always just prefer a gilda Pinxto style (that is, on a skewer and edible in one bite, equivalent to your entire recommended daily salt intake). Elsewhere there were ricotta and Winchester croquettes, served on charred corn mayo with red pepper – as you can imagine, this had a whole sweet and salty thing going on, but I also liked that the kitchen didn’t balance the creaminess out with a salsa or something, and rather just doubled down – and of course, the crab butter flatbread.
You cannot move for flatbreads at the moment (The Thomas Straker Effect), but that’s just because everyone likes them so much – it’s bread with delicious stuff on – and they’re naturally extremely versatile and pretty cheap to make. At a Cool pub that understands its audience, it’s not surprising that they’d be on the menu.
This one was puffed up around the sides, and soft in the middle, with the butter brushed over it, seeping down through to the bottom of the bread. There were flecks of crab scattered across the top, with chilli too. Eating it felt indulgent, though the butter didn’t cloy or overwhelm the crab, instead taking its reasonably mild flavour from it.
In general, I liked the food at The Clock House Tavern because it immediately felt like the type of place I might go on a midweek evening when I’m in the mood for something Nice but don’t especially want to over-spend, or go especially far either. It’s a well-considered menu that the kitchen really pulls off – just fancy enough to make you feel like you’ve been Out, but with all the convenience of simply rocking up to the pub and ordering whatever you like. And while, as the autumn sets in, I imagine that on a Sunday, for a roast, it’ll probably be a different story entirely (I think they sold out in three hours on their first weekend), a leisurely burger and a pint in an almost aggressively cosy space is also a pretty good way to spend a cold afternoon or evening.
*Plastic American McDonald’s cheese is the correct cheese for a smashburger because it kind of congeals in with the meat which rocks, but it is of course not the right cheese for a “steakhouse” type burger, for which you should employ a slab of blue cheese with a side of wedge salad, cheers.
This visit was arranged by LMA PR <3 opinions and Ablisa jokes my own <3
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.
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