White Swan Pub & Dining Room

Between Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, this outpost of the ETM empire (the Gun, the Botanist, the Jugged Hare and so on) is perfectly pitched at affluent local workers. It’s a rebuild of an older pub of the same name on the site, and follows the model of the group’s other venues: smartly traditional ground-floor bar with a small but well-kept selection of real ales (two Adnam’s, one Wandle on our visit); rather posh dining room on the first, complete with tablecloths and attentive service.

And tallying with our experience of other ETM pubs, the ambitious food is almost there – it reads very well on the menu, it looks fantastic on the plate, but afterwards there’s a feeling something is missing. However, that’s a minor criticism. Both our starters were delicate ensembles of summery ingredients – a salad of young leek, carrot and scotched quail’s egg with goat curd, and a mackerel fillet with mackerel tartar and pickled beetroot. Mains are mainly meaty, with the likes of stuffed saddle of rabbit, mutton with grilled tongue and wild garlic purée, or 45-day aged sirloin all making an appearance. Most evenings, the wood-panelled bar throngs with unwinding besuited professionals.