Rating: 8.5/10
Telephone: 020-7603 5374
Address: 57 Masbro Road, London W14.
Open: All week, lunch 12.30-2.30pm (3pm Sun); dinner, 7-10pm (9.30pm Sun)
Price: Three-course meal with wine, £25-30 a head.
Whenever any commercial premises go up in smoke, the cynics among us are reminded of a Jewish joke so well known that it barely requires retelling here... the one about the fella who goes up to a schmutter trade acquaintance in synagogue one morning and says, "Morrie, I was so sorry to hear about the fire at your factory." "Sidney, you meshuggenah, shut your mouth," he hisses. "The fire's on Tuesday."
The only business inferno I've ever heard of that I know for certain wasn't an insurance fire was the one that gutted the Havelock Tavern, and its owners, some 15 months ago. The co-owner and head chef Jonny Haughton, whom I know a little, revealed the source of the blaze as a fag butt thrown by a member of staff into a dustbin, which, because it was plastic rather than steel, voided the entire policy at the very moment he and his business partner were about to finalise the pub's sale for some two million quid.
If that happened to me, the two-part response would be automatic. First, I would hunt down said staff member, tie him to a chair, and - newly embracing a punishment-fits-the-crime penal philosophy - douse him in petrol before casually lighting a Marlboro. Then, later that day, I'd fly to Laos to spend the rest of my life avoiding the law and embracing oblivion in an opium den.
Haughton, who accepted the blow with indecent calm and rebuilt the pub, is a steelier type. As, indeed, are his new bins, which are the only thing visibly to have changed since he recently reopened for business. Everything else, staff included, seems unaltered - and no wonder, because no one but a fool changes a winning formula, and few formulae in modern catering have been more successful than the Havelock's.
The special appeal of a place routinely listed among the country's pioneering gastropubs is that it isn't a gastropub at all but a real pub that serves food. The centrepiece of a room done out in a late-Victorian colour scheme of cream and mauve, and with 19th-century prints all over the walls, along with a QPR pennant, is an enormous bar that doles out good beer along with a limited but well-chosen selection of wines. The place also underlines its pub-ness by insisting that everything is paid for up front, in cash or by cheque.
Partly as a result, the Havelock has a determinedly local flavour, the regulars greeted with the sort of warm familiarity with which Joe Grundy is welcomed in The Bull in Ambridge. That said, the everyday stories told here are more likely to be of media and public relations than of arable farming.
As for the cooking, this relies on the neat yet oddly elusive amalgam of simplicity, imagination and good, fresh ingredients (the menu changes twice daily). A starter of crispy, greaseless deep-fried squid came with a pretty salad of thinly sliced cucumber, carrot and spring onion seasoned with coriander and a sweet chilli sauce that appeared to be homemade, while my plate of excellent Italian salami and Parma ham was adorned with a fried courgette flower, good olives and pickles.
Both main courses were immaculate. Rare roast beef, cut in thick slices, looked wonderful on a bed of rocket alongside basil-sprinkled boiled potatoes dyed in beetroot juice, which seemed a curious length to go for colour coordination. Best of all, however, was my incredibly tender, juicy and flavoursome braised leg of rabbit served with olives, tomatoes, peppers and green beans, all atop a mound of buttery mash to soak up the lustrous gravy. A shared pudding of quivery pannacotta with poached pears was faultless, too, as was the freshly baked crusty bread at the start and the coffee at the end.
If the place does have an obvious fault, it's that it can be a victim of its own popularity in the evenings: the no-bookings policy and resulting long waits are highly irksome to those who've spent ages driving through the roadworks that surround this part of London to reach it. But for those with the wit to hire a fire engine or other siren-bearing vehicle for the trip, eating in a pub comes little better than this.
