The crowning jewel of the ‘every single person in the world exclusively drinks Guinness now’ revolution, Covent Garden’s new Open Gate Brewery, is a colossal temple to all things creamy and stout-based. 

Alongside their more traditional ‘pint and a pie’ offering at the Brewer’s Yard, the Brewery also contains two more formal restaurants, one of which is the Porter’s Table. Named after the market porters who were once the backbone of Covent Garden, the name feels a little bit like an attempt to generate some history for a venue which is fundamentally brand new. Luckily, it’s not something they lean on too heavily, and the restaurant itself relies more on its own merits than calls to what came before.

Food is meat-heavy (Gilroy’s Loft, the upstairs restaurant, focuses on seafood), with nods to Guinness’ Irish roots that don’t descend into cosplay. Soda Bread is on offer, and the portion of new potatoes which comes with our lamb chop are the kind of size anyone who’s ever been fed by an Irish person will recognise (large, is what we’re saying). It’s nice to see a bit of a theme running through the menu without compromising on the quality of the food.

That lamb chop we mentioned is absolutely delicious, with the fat perfectly rendered into a soft, crispy streak. The steak is likewise superbly cooked, served with a Guinness peppercorn sauce which is so creamy it feels like a crime. For our money though, the standout item is the lamb and leek crumpet, which is up there with the best things we’ve tasted all year. Confit lamb is slathered over a soft, pillowy crumpet and paired with pickles and a mustard creme fraiche which do just enough to contrast with the richness of the main ingredients. It’s absolutely phenomenal.

Elsewhere, Guinness is creatively added to the mushrooms, the pie and the gravy. It’s also in three of the desserts, with the Guinness ice cream being surprisingly good. The highlight of the dessert menu has to be the banoffee cheesecake, both because banoffee pie absolutely deserves to have a tiramisu-style comeback and because it just works so well. A Guinness caramel and a ginger biscuit add a tiny bit of savoury to a plateful of sweet, combining to make a dessert which hits the spot without feeling sickly.

One other thing worth mentioning is the Guinness itself, which is (perhaps unsurprisingly) very well poured. They’ve also got Guinness 0.0 on draught, something more places should follow suit on because it’s absolutely the best 0% beer out there. The seasonal offerings are a bit more hit and miss, with their pale ale being surprisingly good, although we’re less convinced by their summer coconut porter.

The Porter’s Table could easily sell itself on novelty alone, a feeling which is reinforced by the amount of times they use Guinness in their food menu. Luckily, their food more than stands on its own merits, with the Guinness connection acting more as a nice twist than a focal point of everything they do. Next time you’re in Covent Garden, stop by for a crumpet covered in lamb confit and a pint of plain – you won’t regret it.

For more information on The Porter’s Table, see here 

Address: 28 Shelton Street, London, WC2H 9PU

Photo credit: Justin DeSouza