Gastrological Predictions

06 August 2005 By db staff writer

“standfirst”>As The White Swan spreads its wings in Holborn, Tom and Ed Martin tell Patrick Schmitt about the new breed of gastropubs offering the same food and service standards as the very best restaurants

The jubilation was understandable: I met Tom and Ed Martin – already drinking vintage Veuve – 10 minutes after it was announced that Britain had won the Olympic bid. And that was just three months before their new pub was due to open, in Victoria Park, Hackney, an area sure to benefit from London’s victory. Even the French staff at The White Swan, the Martin brother’s Holborn-based operation where we sipped Champagne, were enthusiastic about the outcome, hoping presumably it might help their careers in the capital.

But by the time the Veuve was finished the excitement had subsided and the conversation turned to the more sobering subject of business. The Martins, both vast, and seemingly laid-back, have an expanding operation to manage, and a busy schedule. Just organising a time to meet them together took months. So, we headed upstairs, where The Swan’s cosy pub-like atmosphere gives way to a smart, airy dining room with white linen and a mirrored ceiling. Here, Tom, the older of the two, gave a clear account of how they both ended up managing a small collection of upmarket gastropubs, not forgetting why the roof above our heads was reflective.

 “I was a lawyer in the City for six years,” recalls Tom, as the lunch menus arrive. “I got to the point where I should have been deciding if I was going to be a partner in the firm, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do.“I spend most of my life in pubs and I wanted to do something within the pub environment to make them a lot better.”

Hence, when Tom stumbled across an empty ex-pub on St John’s Street, having just moved to Clerkenwell with his wife, he immediately approached the vendor, who Tom convinced to sell outright (there was someone in line to lease it).

“Then we designed the entire thing from scratch, it was a pub originally, but it had been shut for about 25 years,” he explains.

What emerged, in November 2000, was The Well. “It became a success overnight; we opened and it’s been busy ever since,” says to Tom, although when he says we, he is referring to his initial business partner. Ed, at this stage, was still at university and then went off to Brazil to learn Portuguese.

Nevertheless, on his return some two years later, Tom enrolled him, so to speak. “I said why don’t you come and do this because it’s the sort of business where you need people you can trust entirely.” And so Ed joined Tom, heading up the drinks side, helped by his experience of mixing caipirinhas in Brazil. “I also tend to work slightly more closely with the accountant, setting budgets and doing all the business plans,” Ed says, having studied finance at university. “Tom, with his background in law, does all the legal side of the business, the staffing, contracts and all that part of it; we work closely to fit it all together,” Ed continues.

“Having got such pleasure out of the fact that a lot of people really liked The Well, we thought why not explore opening some others?” says Tom. He had worked in the Holborn area as a solicitor where he found, “There was a lack of anything decent to eat at lunchtimes or drink at in the evenings around here. I used to know this pub which was previously known as the Mucky Duck and it was an absolute hole of a place. It came on the market and we jumped at the chance, renaming it The White Swan, its original name.”

Following this came The Gun in Docklands and, mentioned earlier, soon to open is another in Victoria Park. Both brothers note, however, that with the boom in the gastropub market, it’s extremely hard to find good sites. They are also keen to stress there is no branded feel common to the pubs. “Every venue is designed on its location, environment and historical interest – the idea is to keep each place independent,” Tom insists. “The last thing you want to do is roll out the same menu, wine list and furniture, which I think is the reason for the demise of so many chain venues these days. They might be popular for a year or two but then everyone becomes bored and the concept becomes tired.” Ed agrees, adding, “Quite a lot of our customers might go to all of our places – they might live in Docklands but work here – and we don’t want them to feel they are getting exactly the same thing wherever they go.”

As for a limit on the number of pubs, well, Tom hasn’t set one. “We could probably get to about six or seven the way we are operating at the moment, but beyond that we’d have to re-organise our business completely. We have no real game plan at the moment, we just want to provide the sort of place that we’d want to go to ourselves.”

Furthermore, the sector the Martins are operating in has changed. “I think gastropubs have moved onto the next stage in the last couple of years,” says Tom. “We had a long period when there were only a few outlets, and then there was a massive boom, especially when all the breweries cottoned on. It then started to have a bad name for itself, and then out of that quite a few venues have come up – our places, Barnaby’s [Meredith], Tom Etridge’s. You could call it the new breed of gastropub; it’s very different to the old-style Eagle, not ruff and tumble. We are doing more a restaurant operation within a pub environment.”

And to make sure a Tom and Ed product fits in with this new breed of gastropub it must have “the same level of service you can expect from a top London restaurant, and the same level of food”; lavatories as good as “a hotel in London”, and the “ambience you would expect of a friendly local pub”. The only constraint to all of this is the old pub fabric, in which “you have to use the facilities you’re given, particularly if it’s listed like The Gun”. This can make it hard to achieve the high service element.

And what about that mirrored ceiling in The White Swan? It’s definitely not part of the usual decor of your friendly local. “It’s to help give the room a feeling of more space,” Ed initially explains, before Tom adds, “We did a lot of deals in the bar in The Dorchester – it was near where Ed was living at the time – and there is a mirrored ceiling there and we thought it was beautiful.” 

Tom Martin – 34

Ed Martin – 26

Pub portfolio: November 2000 The Well 180 St John Street Clerkenwell

November 2003 The White Swan 108 Fetter Lane Holborn

September 2004 The Gun 27 Coldharbour Docklands

Scheduled for November 2005 The Empress of India Victoria Park Hackney