Rating
Cuisine
British Gastropub (though David doesn’t like that term very much)
Appeals To
Real ale pilgrims and city pub/independent pub lovers who want to see why CAMRA have awarded the Dispensary ‘East London Pub Of The Year’ twice now.
People who like off menu, and foodlike surprises! Chef Patron David Cambridge was a private chef to The Rothchild family – which means that if he’s there, and available and if you bring the ingredients, he might very well cook something off menu for you then and there. In case you are wondering, this is quite uncommon and also pretty ballsy.
In A Word
Familial
Dispensation
The Dispensary can be found down by Aldgate East, not so far from Whitechapel. In an area surrounded by skyscrapers, the electrified air of business being done and as of late, building sites (as in, they’re building more sky scrapers so that more business can be done). The Dispensary remains, historically intact…
And there is a history to the place. There are links to The Duke Of Wellington, Jack The Ripper and other things. A quick glance and you can tell that it’s been here a while. The exterior still bears the etchings of it’s distinguished past . The 2nd floor private dining area looks just like a room out of a BBC ‘frocks and bonnets’ production – barring the odd laptop and electrical cable…
Apparently when they’re finish doing it up they’re going to go back to special functions in there – and with ‘butler service’. I learn here that the difference between ‘butler service’ and ‘silver service’ is that in butler service you can get to serve yourself from the butler, so you can choose what you want and how much you want of it. Whereas in silver service you essentially sit there and do nothing whilst food is magically spirited onto your plate by attractive, well attired young people (usually)
The Dispensary is family owned, man and wife and a small, closely knit team that conveys a kind of…raw honesty and lack of slickness that it’s very hard to find in a pub chain.
As we said, Chef Patron, David Cambridge, was private chef to one the Rothschild family – which makes this one of the few places that’ll do off menu, bespoke food on request, or take on ridiculous catering challenges. I’d like to think he’s got the chef equivalent of SAS training but this is probably stretching it a bit.
As far as I know the Cambridges own the whole building, with the first floor dedicated to the pub and small private dining area. Second floor is the aforementioned private dining area/function room (The ‘Wellington Room’) – I can’t remember what’s on the third floor (oops) and the fourth is the Cambridge’s apartment.
Though they get a lot of attention off the back of their CAMRA accolades, The Dispensary is focused first on food – this is what I learn when David comes to tell us a little about the place.
The pub was taken on as a labour of love a few years back. They’re continuing to transform it, redesigning the interior and opening new parts of the building for business. Apparently Channel 5 even wanted to document the transformation at some point, but David isn’t too much a fan of publicity or social media (despite inviting me for a nose about with a notepad and a camera for a few hours).
The menu has been adjusted since those Halcyon days, no more pan seared foie gras (people are a bit more frugal right now. But, by adapting like this they’ve made it through the recession, despite the formidable downsizing that hit the nearby businesses that constituted their client base. Hopefully, the only way is up from here.
The day I visit them, I arrive about 90 minutes early (I keep doing this for some stupid reason) – and am happy to find that they’ve got wifi and plug sockets. It’s like working in a coffee shop…but working in a pub. Look at me, being all Bohemian and shit.
Whilst working I get to observing – at this point the clientele is all late middle aged Caucasian professionals with salt and pepper hair, drinking real ales and perhaps taking a long lunch. Along with a pair of younger, possibly Indian tourists, also drinking real ales.
It really gets busier later at around 8:30pm and some noisy suited buggers arrive around 8:45pm though on the whole the place is kinda on the down low until this point.
The Drink
As I said, CAMRA love this pub. Which means if you’re a real ale fan, this is a very great place to go. I’m not a real ale fan, but that’s OK because they also have a diverse and potent selection of spirits in their well stocked bar, along with a well thought out wine selection. They also do a ‘Juice of the day’ – which was pretty good and is an excellent way to justify the consumption of ale of wine (just in case your mind works that way too)
We then get a Malbec on recommendation, which is as good as promised and disappears in a haze of excellent conversation and delicious velvety flavour. Or put another way, it tastes so good that I forget how to savour it and then it is gone.
And then suddenly there is food.
The Food
Steak
I asked for my steak done blue but it comes out closer to maybe medium rare. This disappoints me but continues to confirm my theory that you’re most likely to get a proper blue steak in either a steakhouse or a place with a French chef.
The scallops are sweet and rich. My digestion hates onions and things related to them but I eat them anyway and goddamn the later consequences.
Incredible béarnaise. Best yet, even better than Karpo (the previous #1 – is it weird that I have a ranking system for béarnaise in my head?). It’s kinda nutty and buttery. Incredibly familiar taste that is maddeningly impossible to define.
It came with fries that were more a vehicle for said béarnaise. Odd, in a pub I am kinda expecting chunky, English style chips with everything.
(Though they do do triple cooked chunky chips here)
Green Salad
A conventional salad but with the perfect amount of balsamic vinegar, hitting the ‘sweet spot’ somewhere between delicious and saccharine. No oil as far as I could tell, so a rougher, less rich and more natural feeling salad (I read this sentence back to myself and wonder what has become of my life). Was hoping for a larger portion and it could have done with a few more varieties of leaf…
Cheesecake
Obscenely creamy and yielding. Like some kind of irresistible, destroying Satanic temptation. Definitely one of my top 5 cheesecakes of all time. I don’ know what they did to it to make it taste like that.
It comes with ‘Drunken blueberries’ – which are dipped in some kind of sweet liqueur I think? They’re ever so slightly caramelised I think, and cooked down so that they’re softer than your regular blueberry. They remind me of the sugar cooked blueberry reduction my Mum used to make as a topping for semolina.
Salted Caramel Ice Cream
I think this is the first time I’ve had salted caramel in ice cream form. It, doesn’t do it for me. The caramel comes across too sharply and is at odds with the texture of the dish. Paul, who I’m eating with, seems to enjoy it very much however.
The Verdict
I’ll watch what happens at The Dispensary with great interest as they’ve obviously got big plans and the ability to make big things happen – continuing to open up more and more of the building to the public.
Hopefully with the economy no longer convinced that everything/everybody is fucked, people will spend some more money here and CHEF’ll have more money to put aside towards the developments
As I said earlier, real ale people should get down here, along with anyone who likes the idea of showing up with a bag full of beef mince (asking nicely) and having someone make them gourmet bolognaise or something…
The Details
A: 19A Leman Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 8EN
P: 020 7977 0486
W: www.thedispensarylondon.co.uk/
T: @dispensarypub
