White Swan Pub and Dining Room, The

The White Swan Pub and Dining Room is one of London's more recent and well received gastropubs, which has been highly praised by the likes of Fay Maschler, Charles Campion, Terry Durack and many other important food critics. It opened following a major refurbishment of the premises on the site of the former Mucky Duck Pub.

Brothers Tom and Ed Martin - who have been running The Well in St John Street, Clerkenwell most successfully for the previous 5 years and who most recently, and with much success, opened The Gun in the Docklands a year ago - gutted the entire building to provide a beautifully restored first floor Dining Room and Pub, a Mezzanine area above the Pub and a newly cleaned and restored Ground Floor Pub.

Dishes on offer in the Dining Room could include starters like home-cured herrings with potato, red onion, horseradish, spring onion and pancetta or onion, anchovies and caper tarte fine, this might then be followed by blanquette of veal with morels and garlic greens; corn fed chicken with wild mushroom risotto and cep foam or monkfish with creamed leeks.

A wise person leaves room for their desserts, which could tempt you too easily off the straight and narrow, with choices like: lemon tart; vanilla pannacotta with rhubarb compote; chocolate fondant with saffron and cardamom ice-cream; blood orange marmalade sponge pudding with custard or Sambuca jelly with espresso ice-cream and biscotti.

The pub menu could contain some of the following dishes, but constantly changes, however, it will give you an idea of the style, slightly more rustic than upstairs:

Braised pig's cheeks with horseradish mas
Pheasant pie
Seared rabbit with roast tomatoes, chorizo, basil and creme fraiche
Skate wing with beurre noisette and caper berries
Pint O' Prawns with mayonnaise
Steak and kidney pudding
Wild boar and apple sausages, mustard mash and red onion gravy
Home made veal burger with fat chips
Fish and chips
Onion and Lancashire cheese tart

It is difficult to quote a cost per head, as you can eat more reasonably in the pub than in the dining room; it is worth noting that the whole place can be hired for private parties over the weekend.