When I told a mate in the drinks industry that we were taking over the old Devonshire pub in Soho,’ says Oisin Rogers, the renowned publican known to his friends as Osh, ‘he burst into fits of incredulous laughter. “It’s a f**king dog of a site. Honestly, you’d be better off going and doing something else altogether.”’ He pauses, then grins. ‘I rinse him all the time about that.’ Rogers has a point. Because this West End boozer, a mere hop, skip and stumble from Piccadilly Circus, is proof that there’s life in the old pub yet.
Since opening in November 2023, The Devonshire has become a genuine pint-pulling phenomenon, a place where, even on a soggy Monday lunchtime, you have to battle through the thirsty hordes to get a pint of its famed Guinness. It’s not only rumoured to be the country’s top pourer of the Black Stuff (a staggering 4,909 pints were sold in one day before Christmas last year), but arguably the best kept, too. ‘We built the pub around the Guinness installation,’ says Rogers. ‘And put in special beer lines that pour pints in half the usual time.’ Which means those queues move fast.
At night it’s busier still, every inch of space filled with punters – not just Londoners but Brits from Perth to Polperro, and tourists. Endless, endless tourists. You only have to scroll through TikTok or Instagram to see the thousands of videos documenting the crowds, often 20 deep – or those attempting ‘splitting the G’, a Guinness drinking game. The Devonshire is a social-media sensation.
But don’t expect cutting-edge cocktails or barrel-aged negroni on tap. There are no glitter balls, hidden speakeasies or pop-up Smash Burgers. Nope, The Devonshire is a proper old-fashioned pub, with £4.95 pints of Budvar and packets of Scampi Fries. You can nip in for a sharpener, linger for a couple or settle in for a session. It has snugs and backrooms and a piano that occasionally gets bashed by the likes of Lewis Capaldi and Ed Sheeran. At a time when an average of six pubs per week are calling last orders for ever, The Devonshire is an outlier, an anomaly, a bona fide bar-room blockbuster. So how do they succeed where so many others flounder and die?
On a sunny late-spring day I meet Rogers for lunch, alongside his two business partners: restaurateur Charlie Carroll, of Flat Iron fame, and chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, the five-Michelin-starred maestro who ran The Fat Duck before going on to open Dinner By Heston Blumenthal. They’re a true hospitality supergroup – a culinary Cream or three-pint Travelling Wilburys. Expectations were sky-high way before the first pint was even pulled. But it’s not as if the site, on the corner of Denman and Sherwood Streets, has an illustrious past. Despite opening in 1793, various forgettable pubs came and went. It had a spell as a Jamie’s Italian before becoming a chicken and burger place. Then came The Devonshire, and everything changed.
For 12 months before opening, they toiled in secret and although it was widely known that Rogers and Carroll were working on something big, news of Palmer-Watts’s involvement was announced just before opening: ‘I think everyone was really surprised to see me pop up here,’ he says.
He oversees the restaurant upstairs, still the hottest table in town. The menu is unashamedly British – potted shrimp, pea and ham soup, lamb cutlets, beef cheek and Guinness suet pudding – all beautifully done. Comfort clad in a Savile Row suit. Table reservations for the next three weeks are released at 10.30am every Thursday. They book out in mere moments. Is there any other way in? ‘Come when it’s not likely to be extremely busy, and be prepared to wait,’ advises Rogers. ‘So, just before noon, or between three and six in the afternoon. Or after 9pm. We take loads of walk-ins for upstairs, over 100 a day. If you’re patient, we’ll try to find you a table.’
From the very first day The Devonshire was packed. I remember walking in and spotting three different national restaurant critics, and an entire menu’s worth of restaurateurs and industry insiders. The owners are impeccably connected and hugely experienced, but in this rabidly digital age it takes more than a few good reviews to hit this big. Social media, albeit unplanned, was key, as the titans of TikTok made it their own, along with the usual selfie-seeking gastro-tourists.
That ever-excitable and inexplicably popular food influencer Eating With Tod described it as ‘the most popular pub in the whole of London’. His review garnered 1.4 million views. Another influencer duo, the floppy-haired Topjaw, seem to record most of their videos outside the pub – they, too, are fans. #TheDevonshireSoho has been viewed 3.7 million times.
But going viral is rarely a sensible long-term business model. London is a fickle mistress, and those capricious iPhone warriors are hardly known for their loyalty. Do the publicans worry about The Devonshire being over-hyped? ‘We do worry, of course we do,’ admits Rogers. ‘We thought it might be good. But we didn’t expect any of this.’
Part of the secret of The Devonshire’s success lies in an absolute obsession with getting every detail right, from the pattern of the handmade Axminster carpet to the exact science behind the pouring of a swift but perfect pint. And it’s not just the Guinness that’s well kept. Every beer is treated like a beloved child. ‘We wanted to create a really good pub with decent food upstairs,’ recalls Carroll. And they wanted it to be as democratic as it was accessible.
‘It doesn’t matter if you’re a binman or a chairman, you’re welcome. You can have a £4.95 pint of Budvar, or drop over £2,000 on a bottle of Lafite Rothschild.’ It’s not just about looking after the punters but earning their loyalty, too. ‘You can shave a man every day,’ Carroll notes, ‘but only cut his throat once.’
Great pubs, though, are made, not born, with hard work, experience, dedication and still more hard work. Happy workers, too, are key. ‘We have a crack team of bar staff who view it as a real craft, something they have great pride in,’ says Carroll. ‘A good pub has good staff at its heart.’
They all acknowledge that it’s a perilous time for British pubs. ‘It’s really bloody hard,’ says Rogers. ‘People will have to pay a bit more for beer. But we’re all swimming in the same water, and I think we should be positive about how important pubs are.’
There’s a lesson here for publicans across the land, about getting back to basics. ‘We give our punters good beer, as well as value for time and money,’ says Carroll as he gets up to leave. ‘Pubs are our church, and they have been for many centuries. I’d hate for that to be lost.’ Rogers nods his agreement. ‘There’s no other place you can go into and spend your valuable time having a pint in a wonderful place, meeting people you wouldn’t necessarily meet.’ He pauses, uncharacteristically quiet. ‘We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re just trying to do things right.’
