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Anchor & Hopeone star

Address:36 The Cut, London SE1 8LP
Tel:020 7928 9898
Email:
Price: £38.00Wine: £13.00Champagne: £35.00
Opening Hours:Tues-Sat 12N-2.30pm Mon-Sat 6-10.30pm Sun 12.30-5pm

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A perennial favourite with readers, who reckon it continues to set the standard for London gastropubs, the Anchor & Hope sets out its stall with a fiercely seasonal menu that changes twice daily. Carefully sourced British ingredients, big flavours & ‘consistently great’ cooking are its calling cards. Among its richly satisfying delights are roast tomato, bread & basil soup, hake in crab broth with sea aster & aïoli or a sharing dish of seven-hour saltmarsh lamb shoulder & boulangerie potatoes (enough ‘for five-ish’). After that, if there’s room, ease off with peaches in Beaujolais. Seasonal drinks such as damson gin are served alongside quaffable cask ales & Old World wines. The ‘slightly worn-down’ interior helps create a generally relaxed & welcoming vibe, though a recurring complaint is that service gets flustered at busy times. Although reservations aren’t accepted during the week, you can now book for Sunday lunch (from 2pm). 

Anchor & Hope Location:

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Reader reviews of Anchor & Hope:

Julie S.
Reviews: 1

Julie S. ( 30s, Female )

It's so disappointing to see a good place go bad.
I've been to this place countless times over the last few years and have many great memories of the food here…slow cooked lamb that collapses in your mouth in heap of sticky flavour, deep black risotto laced with pearly strips of cuttlefish, perfectly cooked rib of beef, oozing reddy pink juices into a slick of bearnaise sauce…i could go on and on. But i won't. After years of consistently great dining experiences here, Saturday night came as a real shock. The starters were ok – the risotto was over salted – but this could be forgiven. It was the main course chaos that followed that was a disaster. 3 of us ordered the English Lop “cooked like boar” and were promptly delivered 3 hunks of luke warm, dry, stringy old sow languishing in a puddle of mash. The Hereford beef was also a disappointment – the dried blood on its surface revealing it had been left out too long before serving, chewy to the point of being difficult to cut with a steak knife, it was served with a potato concoction that looked like it had been chiselled out of the bottom of a burnt cooking pot.

So we complained. The waitress called over the manager who, going into a routine that looked a little too well practiced, quickly whisked our dishes away and thrust menus back at us, commanding us to choose again. No choice of a replacement (of the same) dish, or of simply not charging for the main and proceeding to desert. I don't recall hearing any apology. The paltry food and the manager's poor attitude prompted us to call… More

19 April 2010
Overall:3
Food and Drink:3
Service:2
Atmosphere:8
Value for Money:2
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Garlic Confit
Silver Reviewer

Garlic Confit ( 30s, Male, United Kingdom )

I'm sure that most of you know the drill here – no bookings, shared tables and always busy.

That can be annoying, if you are hungry and have to wait an hour for a table, in which time you sink a few too many pints, don't really feel like eating when you sit down, you are a bit too close to the people you are sharing a table with and feel that it was a bit of a waste of an evening.

These things are bad when you are planning a nice evening out with your friends. Logic would dictate that YOU WOULD NOT GO HERE IN THAT SITUATION.

This restaurant not gastropub (it has tables and serves food that is good) is all about the food. Now sometimes the portions are uneven, and sometimes they have run out of what you want by the time you get to order. That is life when everything is cooked fresh.
Yes the service can be erratic and once in a while the odd dish does not work as well as it should do. Overall this is a great place to get what I would call an home cooked meal.

There are always seasonal dishes, great bar snacks and a really good mixture of hearty fayre. The best dishes I have had their over the past few years:

red and yellow beets, goats curd and mint
beetroot, mackerel, watercress

Roast shoulder of kid
slow roast venison

treacle tart

these are the dishes that stick out in my mind, I have had many many more and as I mentioned before once in a while I am less than ecstatic with my meal, but I keep going back because it is good.

Service can be slapdash but there are no aspirations of michelin accolades, so just go and enjoy the… More

14 November 2009
Overall:7
Food and Drink:9
Service:7
Atmosphere:7
Value for Money:7
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Food fiend
Gold Reviewer

Food fiend ( 30s, Female, United Kingdom )

I had heard fantastic things about the Anchor and Hope but the few times we had passed by, it was heaving, or the menu looked a bit too eclectic for my tastes. We came upon an empty restaurant on a Saturday for once so decided to take our chances.

I passed on the starters and went straight for the braised lamb neck as my main – very fatty (though this wasnt a bad thing) but probably not the ideal Saturday lunch before a day walking in the sun. It was quite big, bit fatty but tasty, a very hearty meal. Partner had roast chicken caesars salad which looked ok – again, nothing really special. I, of course, had pudding which was the pistachio-est pistachio cake id ever had, delicious, and a bit of a work of art for an obsessive baker like me!

The Anchor and Hope is hugely popular, despite me thinking it was just ‘nice’ – ive also had mixed experiences with their sister place Great Queen Street, once having a fantastic mindblowing roast chicken to share, then having a bland rump steak on another trip. The Anchor and Hope takes no bookings and if you are a fussy sort, id say come early, check the day's menu and have a backup just in case (Tas is over the road and ALWAYS heaving). Or else come on a Saturday lunchtime, i doubt you'd be disappointed, i just didnt see what the huge fuss was about…

September 2009
Overall:7
Food and Drink:7
Service:8
Atmosphere:7
Value for Money:7
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Stuart T.
Reviews: 1

Stuart T. ( Male )

I'd heard about this place a while back so was looking forward to finally checking it out on a Friday evening. But unfortunately none of the great things I heard turned out to be true, and to call this one of London's top Gastropubs is an absolute joke.

We were seated at a table that featured a tabletop that was not properly attached to the base, causing it to wobble about 6 inches up and down on each side – I politely told one of the (uniformly surly) waiters about it and he said “that's the way we like them” then ran off. He then came back some time later (after one of us had a go at fixing it) and wiped the table with a very wet cloth leaving the one end of the table he wiped soaking before running off again.

We ordered some wine which came with tiny tumblers instead of wine glasses. This would have been fine had they bothered to wash them up – the inside of mine was covered with what I hope was chocolate.

Another waiter gave us the menus which promisingly featured some different dishes to those normally found in a pub. A few sounded good, but most of them had to be ordered by 4 or more people. I paid £16 for a rabbit dish which had half the amount of meat described by the waiter and no vegetables – which they didn't bother pointing out at the time of ordering. It was pretty tough and strangely smelt of frankfurters.

One of us had a pudding, which was an insipid looking chocolate mousse of varying consistencies in one of the small tumblers. The one good thing about it was that it confirmed that my dirty glass had indeed been… More

May 2009
Overall:3
Food and Drink:5
Service:2
Atmosphere:5
Value for Money:2
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Carl Johan
Gold Reviewer

Carl Johan ( 30s, Male, United Kingdom )

I’d actually never heard of the Anchor & Hope before I went there the other day. Luckily in a way, it wasn’t as packed as it says here in the Squaremeal review and our party of five only had to wait 5 minutes before our table. The atmosphere was definitely very pubby with rickety tables and slightly worn-down interiors. In fact, just the way a proper pub should be in my view.

I understand why people go here for the food. Everything is presented very simply, but tastes great and fresh. We shared the crab on toast and some small fish (whose proper name I can’t remember), which were both very good. I followed up with a sizable portion of rump steak with vegetables and a tasteful potato cake. It’s maybe not the most difficult dish, but it’s always a joy when they manage to make one properly, which they did.

I thought it was a really nice place to hang out at with a few friends. On the negative side, I found the usually very helpful staff, quite slow. For us it didn’t mean that much since we weren’t really in any rush. But then again, you wouldn’t go to a place like this if you were.

January 2009
Overall:7
Food and Drink:7
Service:6
Atmosphere:7
Value for Money:7
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