The Strand branch has a 4.7. This one has a 4.5. Same chain, same menu, same pasta. The difference is Leicester Square.
We wrote, some sixty articles ago, about the Bella Italia on the Strand – and about the fact that it holds a 4.7 from eight thousand people, which is higher than the Harp, higher than Gordon’s, higher than the Lamb and Flag, and higher than every historic pub in this survey.
We called it the Heritage Penalty and we meant it.
Here is the other one. Irving Street, off Leicester Square. Four thousand reviews. A 4.5.
Two-tenths
Same chain. Same central menu. Same pasta, out of the same supply chain, cooked to the same specification by staff trained to the same standard.
And the Strand branch is rated two-tenths of a star higher than the Leicester Square branch.
We have now demonstrated this effect four separate times in this survey – at the Gods, at Old Shades and the Clarence, at the two All Bar Ones, and now here – and it is the same finding every time. The venue is not being rated. The street is.
The Leicester Square Constant, confirmed
We named it at Zoo Bar, which sits on 3.4 from three thousand seven hundred people and has been letting them down with real consistency for years.
We confirmed it at the Brewmaster, at 4.2, which is a perfectly good pub with an unfortunate postcode.
And it is confirmed a third time here. Any venue within a couple of hundred metres of Leicester Square is drawing from a customer pool that is disproportionately tired, disproportionately new to the city, disproportionately about to be overcharged somewhere else, and disproportionately about to take it out on whoever is nearest.
The Institute for Nightlife Variance in Deptford has now modelled the field across every venue in this dataset and reports that proximity to Leicester Square costs a business between 0.2 and 0.4 stars, permanently, regardless of what it does.
The pre-theatre machine, again
Its function is identical to the Strand branch and it performs it well: feed a family of five, one of whom is nine and will only eat beige, in under fifty minutes, before a curtain.
Nobody else on this street will do that. The Prat has looked. The cocktail bars will not have them. The pubs cannot seat them. Bella Italia takes them, feeds them, and gets them out.
The full table, since we now have it
Two All Bar Ones: 4.6 and 4.5. Two Bella Italias: 4.7 and 4.5. Two Whitehall pubs, same beer: 4.7 and 4.4. Two bars in one building, same operator: 5.0 and 3.8.
Eight venues. Four matched pairs. In every single case the product is identical or near-identical, and in every single case the ratings differ, and in every single case the difference is explained by where the door is and who comes through it.
We did not go looking for this. It fell out of the data. And it is, we would submit, the only genuinely useful thing this magazine has produced in a hundred and ten attempts.
Verdict
It is a Bella Italia. It is doing the job. It is two-tenths of a star worse than the identical branch a few minutes away, and it has done nothing to deserve that, and there is nothing it can do about it.
Go if you have a curtain to make. Do not go if you do not. Everybody involved understands the arrangement.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
