The Pelican

All Saints Road and What a Neighbourhood Pub Can Be

All Saints Road carries a particular kind of Notting Hill authority. It has always been a street that resists the area's more conspicuous wealth, preferring a slower, more lived-in character. The Pelican, on the corner at number 45, fits that register precisely: a large, strikingly converted Victorian pub that reads as glamorous without straining for it. From the outside, the bones of the original building are still visible. Inside, the scale is generous enough to feel like a genuine gathering place rather than a curated dining room wearing a pub's clothing.

The Public House Group opened The Pelican in 2022, and in the years since it has functioned as a kind of proof of concept for what the group has gone on to replicate across other sites. That a hospitality group would use a single venue as a blueprint is not unusual; what is notable here is how little the original has been diluted by that expansion. The Pelican retains the character of somewhere that knows its regulars, where the room operates at several speeds simultaneously: a solitary pint at the bar, a long lunch stretching past three, a table of six sharing something from the carving board.

The Menu as Editorial Statement

The cooking at The Pelican communicates its priorities in the shortest possible sentences. Descriptions on the menu run to two or three words: "chicken, girolles" or "mullet, mussels". That brevity is not affectation. It reflects a broader shift in London pub dining toward letting sourcing speak, where the provenance of the ingredient is the point and the preparation is assumed to be competent rather than announced. A lengthy run of specials, written by hand onto the printed menu, extends the range without overcomplicating the format.

Across London's gastropub tier, the gap between ambition and execution has historically been wide. Menus promise provenance; kitchens deliver workmanlike results. The Pelican sits in a smaller group of addresses where the gap has largely closed. Spider crab on toast and battered cod cheeks served with a curry sauce that carries real colour and depth are the kinds of dishes that work as either a light lunch in themselves or as the opening act for something more substantial. A bone-in sirloin served to share, with a salad of cucumber and sorrel, occupies the heavier end of the register without tipping into the self-conscious territory that plagues too many London pub kitchens attempting restaurant-grade main events.

The dessert section rewards attention. The chocolate mousse is the reliable close, but the parkin and custard is the more interesting order in the colder months, a specifically northern English preparation that appears infrequently on London menus and signals that the kitchen is drawing on a wider tradition than the obvious gastropub repertoire.

Drinking at the Pelican

Beer and wine are taken seriously here in ways that go beyond token gestures. The pub's own Allsop's Pilsner is the default starting point for good reason: it is the kind of house lager that functions as a credential, a signal that the venue has invested in its drinking programme rather than treating it as an afterthought to the kitchen. Lost and Grounded Brewers from Bristol provide an alternative on tap, a choice that places The Pelican within a loose network of London venues that have made a point of sourcing from independent regional producers rather than defaulting to national accounts.

The wine list is carefully assembled and, more usefully, priced with the pub format in mind. This is not a list designed to intimidate or to extract a premium from a captive audience. Value appears at multiple price points, which in a Notting Hill postcode is a considered decision rather than a default one. For bars in other UK cities taking a similarly principled approach to their programmes, see Schofield's in Manchester, Bramble in Edinburgh, and Horseshoe Bar Glasgow in Glasgow.

Where The Pelican Sits in the West London Pub Conversation

London's better neighbourhood pubs tend to cluster into recognisable types. There is the wine-led gastropub, where the kitchen is almost incidental to a list built around natural producers. There is the chef-driven destination that happens to have a bar. And there is the pub that functions as an actual pub first, where the food is serious without displacing the drinking culture that makes the room work. The Pelican belongs to the third category, and that is the harder thing to pull off in a city where the economics of hospitality push operators toward the higher-margin dining model at the expense of the bar.

In that context, The Pelican's continued consistency since 2022 is worth registering. It opened with a clear identity and has not been revised into something more cautious or more commercial. For London's cocktail bar programme, addresses like 69 Colebrooke Row, A Bar with Shapes For a Name, Academy, and Amaro occupy a different tier of the drinking city, one built around technique and format. The Pelican operates on different terms: the credential here is neighbourhood trust, built drink by drink and service by service over three years.

For international travellers looking at the UK drinking scene more broadly, it is worth noting that the neighbourhood pub model The Pelican represents has analogues elsewhere: Merchant Hotel in Belfast, Mojo Leeds in Leeds, and L'Atelier Du Vin Wine and Cocktail Bar in Brighton and Hove each represent a version of the serious local that takes its room and its programme as seriously as any destination address. Further afield, Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu applies comparable rigour in a very different context. Our full London restaurants guide covers the wider range of options across the city.

Planning Your Visit

Address: 45 All Saints Rd, London W11 1HE. Reservations: Booking policies are not confirmed in available data; walk-ins are typical for neighbourhood pubs of this format, though weekend evenings at a venue of this profile warrant advance planning. Dress: No code; the room is smart-casual by the nature of its Notting Hill postcode. Budget: The wine list is structured to offer value at multiple price points; the food menu is brief and priced in line with the gastropub tier rather than the destination-restaurant bracket. When to go: The parkin and custard on the dessert menu makes the autumn and winter visit the more seasonally specific option.