One of the biggest numbers in this survey, and it belongs to a chain, and we have to explain that
Turtle Bay in Camden holds a 4.8 from six thousand two hundred and thirty-nine people.
That is one of the highest numbers on a large sample anywhere in this survey, and it belongs to a chain.
And we have to deal with that, because we have spent six postcodes being condescending about chains.
What we have been saying
That chains drift. That the star rating measures the gap between expectation and delivery, and the gap moves with the pavement – which is why almost every chain in this survey scores differently in different districts.
Five Be At Ones: 4.6, 4.6, 4.3, 4.5, 4.6.
Five Cocktail Clubs: 4.7, 4.6, 4.5, 4.4, 4.4.
Two Bootleggers: 5.0 and 4.3, and they are the same bar.
Why this holds
Because volume normally punishes, and it has not punished here.
Six thousand reviews is six thousand separate evenings, and somewhere in that number there was a bad Saturday, a broken cistern, and a member of staff having the worst week of their life.
All of it is in the average. Permanently. And it has still come out at 4.8.
That is very difficult to do and it is not luck.
What they are actually doing
Promising something small and delivering it every single time.
Loud room. Bright colours. Enormous menu. Extremely long happy hour. Music at a volume that makes conversation effortful, which is deliberate.
And nobody is going to make you feel stupid for ordering wrongly.
Which we have argued in six postcodes is worth more than any cocktail, because ratings are almost never destroyed by what is in the glass – they are destroyed in the ninety seconds before it arrives.
An experience cannot be delivered on demand. An activity can.
And a two-for-one cocktail at half past six on a Tuesday is an activity.
The rum
Which is the actual product, and which is worth taking seriously.
Rum was a waste product. It is distilled from molasses – what is left when the sugar has been crystallised out – and it was made because nobody knew what else to do with the residue.
And the sugar plantations of the Caribbean were operated by enslaved people, in conditions that killed them at a rate requiring continuous replacement, and rum was both a by-product and a currency of that system.
It was traded for people on the African coast. That is not a controversial reading; it is the documented structure of the business.
The Prat wrote this at Cottons and at the Sugar Loaf, and it is not a footnote to the drink. It is where the drink comes from.
Verdict
What the chain is actually good at
Consistency, which is invisible and which is extremely expensive.
To hold a 4.8 across six thousand people you need the same training, the same stock, the same measures, the same recipes and the same recruitment – and every one of those is a system that somebody has to build, maintain and audit, forever.
The independent bar with a 4.9 achieved it with one exceptional person behind the counter. That is a wonderful thing, and it does not scale, and it cannot be bought.
A chain holding a 4.8 across six thousand people has done something different and considerably harder to explain – and the trade press has never once written about it, because it is not a story.
Verdict
Excellent number, honestly earned, and the happy hour is the point.
I am a Lagos-born poet and satirical journalist navigating West London’s contradictions. I survived lions at six, taught English by Irish nuns, now wielding words as weapons against absurdity. Illegal in London but undeniable. I write often for https://bohiney.com/author/junglepussy/.
As a young child, I was mostly influenced by the television show Moesha, starring singer and actress Brandy. Growing up, I would see Brandy on Moesha and see her keeping in her cornrows and her braids, but still flourish in her art and music, looking fly. I loved Moesha as a child, but now I take away something more special from it. Just because you’re a black girl, it doesn’t mean you need to only care about hair and makeup. Brandy cared about books, culture and where she was going — you can do both.
