The Gunmakers, London EC1

When Jay Rayner's lunchtime boozer catches the gastro-pub virus, he fears there'll be an outbreak of pad thai. But he has nothing to worry about

Telephone: 020 7278 1022
Address: 13 Eyre Street Hill, London EC1
Lunch for two, including drinks and service, £45

A little while ago I shamelessly attempted to use this column for my own advantage, by announcing that the lease on a pub round the corner from my house in south London was up for grabs. Surely, I said, there was someone out there who could deliver me my very own gastropub. Every other bloody neighbourhood had one. Why not mine? For about two weeks there was some serious interest from some very serious people. And then the freeholders had either a failure of imagination or an outbreak of consistency, depending upon your point of view: they handed the lease back to the present incumbents.

So it's sausage and chips and quiz nights on Thursdays once more.

Perhaps I shouldn't be disappointed. Over the past few months it has seemed as if every pub in London and beyond is now considered fair game for the gastropub makeover: strip the floor boards, burn the curtains, buy a whole bunch of mismatching furniture and 15 cases of Argentinian Malbec and you're away. There is a logic to this. A pub as a restaurant has the advantage of ready-made premises and cash flow from the bar to fund the quieter times in the kitchen.

The problem, judging from the menus that come my way, is the food coming out of those kitchens. There are outbreaks of wasabi and pad thai and pak choi all over the place. On these menus, the south of France, the north of Spain and the arse end of Greece are all of a piece. If it reads nicely, it goes on the list. What bothers me about this is that there are so very few chefs who are truly fluent in so many languages.

The original gastropub, the Eagle, just up the road from the offices of this newspaper, had the sense to recognise that it was better to do one kind of food well - in their case southern European - than to do 10 badly.

Certainly, what very few of these places do is reflect upon the nature of their premises, and how the food should work with that. Which brings me to a newly invigorated establishment which, like the Eagle, is also just a beer bottle's throw away from this office. (Stop whining about me not getting out enough; I was in north Lincolnshire only a week or two back.)

The Gunmakers is a tiny pub down a Clerkenwell back street.

The makeover is simple and understated, which is to say, stripped floors (natch), red banquettes and avocado green walls. There are a couple of duff notes, like the shades on the wall mounted lights, which look like they came from a bankruptcy sale at a Torquay guest house, and the attire of one of the skinny chaps who runs it, who will insist on wearing lime green pullovers and baseball caps and the kind of beard one usually grows in captivity. But let us forgive all of that, for the thing here is the blackboard-written menu.

It is not astounding. Nor is it visionary - and that's its strength. These are dishes that understand their environment. It is pub food done properly - or at least food that does not look out of place in a pub. So, you can get a full pint glass of plump shell-on prawns with brown bread and butter for a fiver to start, or a thick, creamy soup of roasted winter vegetables.

Main courses are equally robust. A big grilled pork chop came with a sizeable chunk of a piquant black pudding. Sausages were good solid porkers. A grilled hunk of lamb was crisp and caramelised outside and pink within. Each of these came with a great pillow of admirable mash, and a light and meaty gravy of one sort or another to keep the protein moving on the plate. Its virtues lie in its simplicity and, at £8 for main courses, in its appropriate pricing.

We could have finished with jam roly-poly and custard or a plate of English cheeses, including slabs of superb Montgomery Cheddar, but, on a weekday lunchtime, we did not have the appetite. Would I want every gastropub to be like the Gunmakers? No - but, like those hefty puddings, it's always good to know they are there.

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