Fox & Anchor Pub ★★☆
Breakfast at London's Fox & Anchor pub comes with a pint of Guinness and the company of the slaughterhouse workers
The Fox & Anchor pub—a late Victorian beauty from 1898 with a recently refitted Edwardian interior—sits half-block down a side street from the flank of Smithfield, London's massive butchery market.
Since meat cutters work the dawn shift and are knocking off work when most of us are just getting up, the pub has a special exemption to the local liquor license laws which allows it to serve beer at breakfast (from 7am Mon-Fri, 8:30am Sat-Sun).
It costs about £17, but it'll last you through to dinner, trust me: two eggs, bacon, pork and leek sausages, minute steak, beans, calves liver, fried bread, mushroom, black and white pudding, a tomato, unlimited tea, and—of course—a pint of stout.
The pub closed in 2006, but was rescued from developers by hotelier Richard Balfour-Lynn, who freshened up the interior, added more (classy) food to the menu, and reopened in November of 2007.
I haven't had the good fortune to return since, but have heard that he has retained the inimitable breakfast, and has added six elegant rooms upstairs with copper rolltop tubs and Egyptian linen sheets (from £95 weekends, £165 other times).
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Also in Reid's List: London Dining:
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- Rules Restaurant★★★| £££
- Chor Bizarre★★★| £££
- The George Inn pub★★☆| ££
- The Spaniards Inn pub★★☆| ££
- Belgo Centraal★★☆| £
- The Anchor Bankside pub★★☆| £
- The Ivy★★☆| £££
- Gay Hussar★★☆| £££
- Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese★★☆| ££
