Nowhere on Earth do the modern world and history live side by side like they do in London. A short walk from the iconic skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, I find myself in a pub that was here when Sir Walter Raleigh’s third expedition set sail to the New World from the Thames directly outside in 1587.
The Grapes has been here for nearly 500 years. You can tell. It’s outlasted God knows how many other pubs, both historic and modern, that have come and gone in the capital in that time. And Raleigh is not the only heavyweight British name associated with it. In 1661, Samuel Pepys’ diary records his trip to lime kilns at the jetty just along from The Grapes.
Charles Dickens was a regular visitor to the area and is said to have included The Grapes, “scarcely disguised”, in the opening chapter of his novel, Our Mutual Friend, in which he describes it as “a tavern of dropsical appearance… long settled down into a state of hale infirmity” (as I sat on a stool hunched over a barrel table, I noticed a complete set of Dickens books arranged across the wall right behind me).
Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and painter Francis Bacon are also said to have been fascinated with this part of London and the pub’s walls are adorned with oil paintings and water-colours as well as books.
And today, there’s another British icon whose name is heavily linked to The Grapes. In fact, he’s no less than a knight of the realm and a national treasure. The current leaseholder is Sir Ian McKellen, the legend of stage and screen, who has seven Olivier awards to his name for his theatre acting but is probably best known to most for playing Gandalf in Lord of the Rings (when I told my barber where I was going for a pint he had no idea who “Sir Ian McKellen” was but was much more enthusiastic when I said “You know, Gandalf from Lord of the Rings”).
My journey to the pub began on the Elizabeth Line (I’d rather be in Mordor than on the London Underground between 5pm and 6pm on a weekday). But within minutes of emerging from the frantic Canary Wharf tube station, I was in relative solitude on the streets of Limehouse and arrived outside the the pub, where its colourful hanging baskets and the warm glow through frosted glass could not have been more welcoming in London’s mid-Autumn twilight.
I thought I’d been canny getting here before 6pm but there were no available seats to be seen in the snug bar downstairs and I started to worry I’d be denied my fish supper. Then I found a narrow stairway hidden behind the bar and ventured up it to find a free table (in the form of a large wooden barrel) in another cute and cosy room upstairs.
From out of the window, darkness fell over the Thames and the Canary Wharf skyline downstream and I headed down to the bar to order my dinner and a pint of Guinness.
The pint was £6.15, which still shocks me to the core as someone who can still remember paying £1.10 for a pint as a teenager but is in no way unreasonable in London. And fish and chips for £18.50 in a beautiful pub owned by a bona fide movie star in London feels like a steal.
The fish and chunky chips came with a generous dollop of mushy peas and a fairly standard side salad of rocket, chopped cucumber, onion and tomatoes. There’s not a huge amount more to say about the food. It was thoroughly enjoyable in a non-spectacular way. I did notice that the fish and its light batter were not in the least bit greasy, so I didn’t feel slightly gross after eating it as can sometimes happen with a greasy fish supper. The Guinness was good too.
But, in any case, unless they are set up to revolve entirely around exceptional food, pubs and restaurants are all about how they make you feel. In The Grapes, I felt happy. In fact, I’ll sum up how I felt in three words: gutted to leave.
