The Audley Public House is on the corner of North Audley Street and Mount Street in Mayfair, opposite the Purdey gun shop where you can buy a gun and a cashmere cape, because the world has changed. The Audley is a vast pale-pink Victorian castle, and it meets Mayfair in grandeur and prettiness. If the Audley looks like it could puncture you with an ornamental pinnacle, it also seems frosted with sugar – but that is money. This is the tourist Mayfair of the affluent American imagination: the pharmacies and grocers have gone, replaced by fashion (Balmain, Simone Rocha) and the spirit of Paddington Bear. Woody Allen shot Match Point in the Audley, and that is the most normal thing about it now.
Inside, it is a late Victorian pub, but glossier, larger and most artful
The Audley is owned by the Duke of Westminster, who sold the lease to Iwan and Manuela Wirth, of Hauser & Wirth and Artfarm, in 2020. They have a very silly art gallery in Somerset, with an adequate restaurant – the Roth Bar and Grill – and a cow shed with a recording of a cow mooing, because people are ridiculous. Above the pub is their Mount Street restaurant, which is insanely expensive, features moderate art by famous artists – this is a Las Vegas trick, buy the worst Monet you can find – and a monumental painting of a naan bread, which isn’t on the menu. The Mount Street restaurant is very fashionable and acts as a sort of bad older sister to the Audley, because the Audley is, though confected, a very good pub indeed. Perhaps the duke insisted the Audley remain a good pub, though how the terms of the lease would enforce that I cannot say: but what else are dukes for nowadays? Pastiche it may be – this is Mayfair, where winged gods on advertising billboards wear knickers for modesty – but it is very good pastiche. You expect to find a Broadway Artful Dodger caterwauling, Scrooge feeding Tiny Tim lobster at Scott’s, and paper snow on the ground.
Inside, it is a late Victorian pub, but glossier, larger and most artful: restrained Artfarm money has fallen on it. They have painted the ceiling in primary-coloured swirls, it is true – it looks as if the Haahoos from In the Night Garden have exploded – but elsewhere there is dark wood, paintings of Victorian gentlemen and East End relics, pint glasses hanging from the ceiling, a pianist in a red suit on an upright, and a photograph of Elizabeth II on the wall. The exterior tile work is exquisite; a sign in the window says, simply, sausages.
They do not take bookings, which is rare in Mayfair. To secure a table you must arrive before 11 a.m. and wait for them to open while staring at the Purdey window display, or the tile work. By noon it is packed with canny drinkers: the wealthy working classes up from Essex for the day, and American tourists off the Tube from Heathrow. Because they have striven to be here, the atmosphere is joyful, and that is rare too.
The staff are charming, and they bring British exceptionalism in food form: Devonshire chicken with bread sauce; Durslade lamb shoulder; Cornish haddock; roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; bangers, mash and onion gravy; sticky toffee pudding; bread and butter pudding; chopped salad with chicken for people who are ill, or do not know where they are. We have the beef, the lamb and the puddings. They are perfect: good meat crisped or bloodied; vegetables neither overcooked nor tepid; pudding a sweet fall to the abyss. For me, this is the least stupid, and best value, restaurant in Mayfair. It was Best Pub in London last year, and it is worthy.
Audley Public House, 41-43 Mount St, London W1; tel: 020 3840 9862.
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