“Look at that. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Oisín Rogers says. The Devonshire’s Dublin-born co-founder, who has run pubs in London for decades, has led me through to the back of the bar, directing my attention toward a sea of faces all anxiously awaiting the pint of Guinness they’d come from various parts of the city, the country and its surrounding isles for. It’s just after four o’clock on a Tuesday in the mushy run-up to Christmas. “Does no one in London work?” I’d heard Irish voices behind me joke while awaiting Rogers’ arrival.
“They all do this–”, Rogers raises his pint glass and tilts it from side to side, examining it. “They want to say, ‘This is better than the one I had before in this place. I feel this, and that’. But actually, it’s a hugely emotional trigger for people to have this in the iconic glass in a wonderful place where you feel an expectation. And when we can deliver on that expectation, that’s where the magic happens.”
A month and change into The Devonshire’s run, expectations are being well exceeded. There have been strong reviews for the food served in the upstairs restaurant (I see Jimi Famurewa, who had given it a doe-eyed four stars for the Evening Standard, pottering around the bar). The Guinness, which Rogers says the pub was built to deliver at a level of quality that has only historically been found in Ireland, is being spoken of in mythical, hushed tones. At an Irish wedding this past weekend, several friends asked me whether I’d been yet, and if it was as good as they’d heard. The groom, who lives and works on the other side of London, told me he’d been three times in the past week. The Devonshire is becoming a pilgrimage. And yes, it is heaving. All day long.
Rogers, wearing a corduroy blazer and a pair of beat-up Adidas Sambas, is buzzing. He, too, has become a key proponent of the Devonshire’s success. Giles Coren’s lauding Sunday Times review namechecked Rogers as “Britain’s most famous publican”, and walking through the pub with him I know it to be true – the way people clamour to shake his hand, to sit and have a pint with him. But he doesn’t sit for long. If you’ve been in over the last few weeks, you’ll have seen him roaming the place endlessly, soaking it all in, a walking embodiment of the pub itself – lively, fun, happy, just a tad elusive.
