The Bull & Last, London NW5: 'A little slice of almost-normal' – restaurant review

When passengers headed north out of London in the 18th century, rattling about in a coach, the final stop on the Highgate Road was an inn called The Bull. As you approached, reports say, the driver would yell, “The Bull … and last”. Sleep through this stop, end up in Leeds. Now, hundreds of years later, The Bull & Last offers new motives not to disappear up north. This is timely: despite Whitehall’s polite requests for Londoners to do Pret a Manger a solid favour and resume the old grind, there are presently more people by the cheese counter at Booths in Keswick than there are in Soho.

The Bull & Last suspended services in October 2018 for a grand redesign, with plans for a fresher, brighter pub with six new boutique-hotel rooms. Instead, it found itself in a pandemic, and ended up reopening as a takeaway and tap room, offering new ways to picnic on nearby Hampstead Heath with gravlax, Ferrero Rocher ice-cream and a litre of carry-out cinsault rosé, and serving up Sunday roasts with shorthorn beef from north Essex or spring green and taleggio pithivier.

The food was always pretty decent at The Bull & Last but, until recently, there was little to set it apart from the dozens of other slightly tarted-up old boozers that are now serving olives and merlot to locals. This new rebirth, however, establishes it as a destination in its own right, with cooking that’s careful, ambitious and surprising. Cuore del Vesuvio tomato tostado with black olive dressing and bronze fennel is basically a fancy name for tomatoes on toast, but, presented as they are here, they deserve a little talking up. Fat, sweet, red tomatoes from Campania with a terrific, punchy, vinegary dressing. A plate of good, warm Irish soda bread arrived with salted butter, which I ate with a glass of chilled Le Grapin beaujolais. The salmon smørrebrød is four fat chunks of pink, cured fish lounging on an earthy, horseradishy, slaw-like bed with boiled egg, strategically placed trout eggs and more decorative dill. Yes, battered haddock and triple-cooked chips is still on the menu, but The Bull & Last is now giving itself room to be unapologetically fancy. Why have that when you can have roast Cornish cod with grilled hispi cabbage in a butter and dill sauce?

By this point, I’d had rather a lot of dill and sharp, vinegary things, and then a buttermilk chicken sandwich turned up wrapped in pretty blue paper and teeming with gherkins, but it’s hard to be churlish about anything at The Bull & Last. The staff are lovely, service is better than at most restaurants and they serve glorious British booze such as Sillymoo cider and Hammerton Oyster Stout. Despite its new lofty leanings, this is still somewhere to bring your family for scotch eggs, bowls of chips and a sunny day meet-up at one of the outdoor tables.

It’s not easy for landlords to make the new Covid landscape feel smooth and welcoming, yet the Bull is now offering two specific sittings at lunch and dinner, with tables so wide apart, you could play boules down the centre of the pub, having first made a short stop at the front door to sanitise your hands and before being escorted to your table.

This is almost as good as it gets in the new, nervous world of ever-moving guidelines. It must be impossible to please everyone. Err on the side of common sense, and some customers will feel edgy; err towards strict, and punters will feel lectured; and if you hide your new policies carefully, some won’t believe you’ve made any at all. It is no surprise, then, that many places aren’t bothering to reopen.

But The Bull & Last is back open for business, and offering a little slice of almost-normal. As the north of England went back into partial lockdown last week, scuppering my plans finally, finally to reunite with my family, I consoled myself with a plate of peanut butter cookies, banana ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce. I have never felt more, in the most bittersweet sense, like Shaun sat in The Winchester Tavern, waiting for this whole mess to blow over. I only hope it will.

• The Bull & Last 168 Highgate Road, London NW5, 020-7267 3641. Open Mon-Fri, noon-11pm, Sat 9am-midnight, Sun 9am-10.30pm. About £38 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service