The Coach, restaurant review: Revamped London pub offers 'best sort of comfort food'

The aim of chef Henry Harris is to provide an 'immaculate French bistro experience'

Clerkenwell (The Coach)

This one trick will not help you lose weight. But it will help you avoid food envy: when in doubt, go rich. Always get the foie gras. Always get the reddest meat. Always get the chocolate pudding.

Food is a study in relativity; you're simply exploiting a savannah-brain lust for the saltiest, sweetest, fattiest, most-calorific ways to fill yourself up. No cuisine is better for the job than straightforward French.

The Coach is a revamped pub in Clerkenwell. It claims a history to the 18th century, but more recently it was where the staff of The Guardian used to get drunk before they moved north to Kings Cross, but don't let that put you off. Everything has been given a thorough wipe-down.

It has been taken over by Henry Harris, the chef whose fabulous restaurant opposite the London Oratory, Racine, was forced to close a couple of a years ago, a victim of Kensington's absent property owners.

The spruced-up space is entirely welcoming. An oak-panneled bar gives way to an airy dining room, lined with higgledy-piggledy art and lit by bulbs inside what look like the cups of enormous wine glasses, which in turn opens onto a sunny garden.

Upstairs is another dining room and a private dining room. It all looks lovely; and not only because for the past month everything in London has looked lovely.

The first half is refreshingly true to its pubbishness. Stop by for a couple of post-work foamers and you might not even know you'd visited a Foodie Destination.

Clerkenwell, London (The Coach)

Lager is encouraged, rather than being sidelined in favour of abstruse IPA's. From the bar menu sausage rolls can be ordered by the inch, as well as burgers without higher aspirations. Ambition is an unwelcome quality in a burger.

So far, so posh London boozer. It's on the main menu that Harris' ambition, to provide an immaculate French bistro experience, becomes clear. If you like this stuff, and who doesn't, your saliva glands will gush.

Every item yearns for attention, like rescue puppies lined up for adoption. It's effective, but it's also simple. Asparagus soup with parmesan. A salad of broad beans, peas and pea shoots. Whole sea bass and steaks to share, for the hungry. Trout a la Normande. Vast steaks to share.

Clerkenwell, London (The Coach)

Panicking, we went rich. Three of us: three starters, three mains. A scoop of duck rillette with crunchy little cornichons; calves brains drenched in capers and butter; a loose, fine-grained steak tartare, heaped with more capers and diced onion.

Then a rabbit leg lying on green bean sleepers in a pool of thick mustard sauce. Our waitress had advised us was the "most Instagrammable" of the main courses. Sign me up. More duck, too: a gold-brown confit leg, resting on a bed of sausage-studded lentils, and a breast, seared and sliced, with artichokes and little Mousseron mushrooms, drenched in an orange reduction.

I can't remember the last time I saw three kinds of duck on a menu outside of Gascony. It's enough to restore your faith in the world.

Clerkenwell, London (The Coach)

It was not an especially summery lunch, although this was hardly the restaurant's fault. With the weather dry enough to reveal ancient Iron Age forts, going rich rendered me insensibly full before dessert. Even so, was the jus on the magret ever so slightly overpowered? Did some of the chips – much-hyped – lack a little crunch? Perhaps, but any minor concerns evaporated in my good mood, a ray of bonhomie provoked by the best sort of comfort food.

Is it worth a visit?

Yes.

Would I go back there?

Yes.

The Coach, Clerkenwell

26-28 Ray St, London EC1R 3DJ

020 3954 1595

Around £50 a head for three courses and some wine