Londoners Magazine

In the increasingly popular Docklands is one of Gordon Ramsay’s gastro pubs, The Narrow.

The pub is housed in a converted lockkeeper’s house with a large conservatory and dazzling views of the Limehouse basin and Canary Wharf.

Ramsay has a slick operation going on. He has never cooked here, but his chefs are carefully selected and our starters are put in front of us quicker than you can say cream of mushroom soup (£4.50) and smoked salmon with poached egg on toast (£5.50).

The menu has a separate section dedicated to food “on toast” so I thought that it must be special.

But no, it was smoked salmon with egg on toast.

When starting up his first gastro pub, Ramsay created an affordable menu packed with good old English recipes. The main course (which came within seconds of taking our empty starters away) was bangers and mash (£10.50) and smoked ham and chicken pie (£11.50).

The mash was beautifully smooth, but the gravy in the bangers was too salty and the pie, once pierced, revealed hardly anything inside apart from oily chicken stock.

We couldn’t find room for dessert; although on the menu were famous English recipes such as bread and butter pudding. We also found ourselves leaving after an hour, not even having time to finish our bottle of wine as the next table was ushered in.

Maybe in the summer The Narrow will be a great pub to stop by, sit out on the decking and try its wide selection of beers, but sometimes a “name” restaurant is not always what it’s cracked up to be.