A chain bar with more reviews than the Lamb and Flag, and a rating higher than the Salisbury, and no story at all
All Bar One Covent Garden has been reviewed by five thousand two hundred and twenty-seven people. It holds a 4.5.
The Lamb and Flag – Grade II listed, the Bucket of Blood, the alley where John Dryden was beaten for writing satire, drunk in by Dickens – has five thousand two hundred and twelve, and a 4.5.
They are, in the eyes of the record, the same pub.
What All Bar One is
Big windows. Blond wood. High tables. A wine list arranged by grape with tasting notes written by a committee. Brunch. A cocktail menu with one seasonal special. Staff in aprons. Music at a volume that permits conversation but discourages lingering. A room that is bright at four and dark at eight without anybody adjusting anything.
It is the same in Covent Garden as it is in Leeds, and that is not an accident. That is the product. That is what has been sold.
Why five thousand people have reviewed it
Because it works. Because if you are organising drinks for nine colleagues, three of whom you do not know, one of whom does not drink, and one of whom is your boss, you cannot take them to the Harp – there is nowhere to stand. You cannot take them to CellarDoor – there is a drag act. You cannot take them to Gordon’s, because it is dark and you will lose two of them.
You take them to All Bar One. Because there are tables you can book, chairs everybody can sit on, food everybody will eat, and a room in which nothing whatsoever will happen.
The Institute for Corporate Hospitality in Beckton has established that the primary function of a chain bar is not to be enjoyed but to be survivable, and that a venue chosen for nine people must be optimised not for the best possible evening but for the least possible complaint.
The uncomfortable part
We have spent seventy articles being delighted by ghosts, licences, tunnels, bare-knuckle fights, a stuffed hound and a bar in a Victorian toilet.
And the plain fact of the dataset – the thing that has been sitting there the whole time, refusing to go away – is that the chains are winning on the numbers. Bella Italia at 4.7. Giraffe with nearly eight thousand. All Bar One matching the Lamb and Flag review for review.
People do not, on the whole, want a story. People want a table for nine at seven o’clock and a bathroom that works.
The name, briefly
All Bar One. It is a pun on “all bar none,” meaning without exception, best of all.
Which is to say that a chain which has built an empire on being reliably unexceptional is named, with total confidence, after a phrase meaning “better than everything else.”
The Prat’s branding desk regards this as either an act of extraordinary corporate nerve or a joke that got past the committee in 1994 and has never been challenged since. We have been unable to determine which and we suspect nobody at head office knows either.
Verdict
It is fine. It is completely, comprehensively fine, and it will be fine tomorrow, and it was fine in Leeds, and five thousand people are correct that it is fine.
And then, when the colleagues have gone home, walk four minutes to the Lamb and Flag, stand in the alley where they beat the poet, and have one for yourself.
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]
