The Hart

The Hart occupies a four-storey corner building where Blandford Street meets Chiltern Street, and takes its name from the Hart family, who kept a pub on the site in the 1840s. Public House, the group behind The Pelican, The Hero and The Fat Badger, opened it in autumn 2025, and the MICHELIN Guide lists it as a new entry for modern British cooking. Much of the produce comes from the group's market garden at Bruern Farms.

The ground floor is a proper pub: flagstone underfoot, a long stripped-pine bar with carved corbels, and booths screened by leaded glass. Above it the rooms get quieter and more particular. There is a dining room of hand-aged panelling, scalloped banquettes and gas fires, a small oak-lined snug beside it, and, at the top of the narrow stairs, The Den, with banquettes along the wall, exposed beams, a hand-painted ceiling and its own cocktail bar.

For events, The Den seats 40 and can be taken exclusively. The restaurant, which seats 45, is let alongside it, so the two rooms together carry 85 at table. The Snug holds 16, and The Nook — a run of partitioned booths off the pub floor — 12. The ground-floor bar stays walk-in only, which keeps a party upstairs separate from the trade below.