A very high score on a small sample, and another woman’s name on a sign that nobody has enquired about
Lillie’s holds a 4.9 from seventy-one people.
Seventy-one is a small sample. We have been ruthless about this for two hundred and sixty-eight articles and we are not going to make an exception because the number is flattering.
But it is not one review, and it is not three, and a 4.9 across seventy-one people is worth pausing on – because it places Lillie’s alongside Stables Bar, Amaro, and the Clipper Lounge, and every single one of those has turned out to be the same kind of room.
The formula, for the last time
Small. Short list. Somebody behind the bar who has tasted everything on it and would like to tell you about it.
That is it. Across two surveys, two hundred and sixty-eight articles and two hundred and forty separate venues, every high-rated bar with a real sample has been that room and nothing else.
Not one of them is themed. Not one of them has a rope, a door policy, a colour-changing cocktail, a stuffed animal, or a concept. Not one of them is famous.
Bedford Street Wines. Archive and Myth. Kioku. Amaro. Cepage[s]. Old Mary’s. Stables. And now this.
It is the least surprising finding imaginable and almost nobody in the industry acts on it, because it does not scale and it cannot be bought.
And another woman
Lillie joins the register.
Gloria, who is blamed. Larry, who is credited. Manolo, whose house it is. Angie, whose pub is free. Old Mary, who is old. Nell Gwyn, who never went in. Biddy Mulligan, who is a song. Alice Diamond, who robbed the West End and has a cocktail bar and no statue.
And Lillie, about whom seventy-one people have written and not one has asked a single question.
We noted at Old Mary’s that this is the most consistent finding in two hundred and sixty-eight articles, and that it is not funny. The women get the sign. Somebody else gets the licence. And every man on a pub sign in this city has a plaque, a page, and a fabricated legend, and the women have nothing at all.
The bar
Twenty to eighty pounds – a serious spend at the top end, which suggests a serious list and a kitchen that is not messing about.
Seventy-one reviews means it has not been found. That is almost certainly deliberate on nobody’s part and it is entirely to your advantage.
Verdict
Go now, while there are seventy-one.
Ask what to drink. Drink that. And ask who Lillie was, because it is beginning to look as though nobody ever will.
The small-sample problem, one final time
Seventy-one reviews puts Lillie’s in a dangerous position and the danger is not the one you would expect.
A venue on a 4.9 from seventy-one people is one bad week away from a 4.6. Every single new review moves the number materially, and the venue has no ballast.
The Harp – the best pub in Britain – sits on a 4.6 from three and a half thousand, and it is essentially unmovable. Nothing that happens on any given night can shift it. That is what a large sample buys you: not a better score, but a stable one.
Lillie’s has an excellent score and no protection whatsoever, and it will keep it exactly as long as its luck holds.
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]
This is documentation of how we actually live in London and what we’ve normalized as functional London governance. That’s the real horror.