Clive Watson and Ashley Letchford to launch Chelsea pub

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City Pub Group chair Clive Watson and Ashley Letchford are teaming up to launch an upmarket Chelsea pub that will offer a British-Basque menu overseen by Masterchef winner Dhruv Baker.

Launching mid next month, King’s House is in the King’s Road site that was once home to Letchford’s The Jam Tree gastropub concept. 

His The Jam Tree group at one point had three sites but now operates a single site in Clapham. 

Baker’s menu will take inspiration from his time cooking in Pamplona, a city in North Eastern Spain close to the border with France. 

Dishes will include 90-day-aged Txuleton steak cooked over fire; grilled daily caught fish with butter beans and chorizo; charred leeks with Romesco; and Toulouse cassoulet. 

The pub will also offer Spanish-influenced bar snacks, weekend brunch and Sunday lunch.

The drinks offer will be overseen by drinks expert Anna Sebastian whose CV includes The Langham, The Savoy and Adam Handling Restaurant Group. 

Cocktails are billed as being 'inventive Basque takes on classic drinks' with options including King’s House Aperol spritz (autumnal apple gin, fig and Cava) and a take on sangria (French rosé, orange and red wine blend, vermouth and Fraise du Périgold).

The concise wine list will feature a range of old and new wines with Spanish and French highlights to match the food menu and Spanish beers will also feature alongside local breweries.

Designed by DesignLSM, the interior and exterior spaces at King’s House ‘blend style and substance’. The light-filled ground floor bar and restaurant features classic shades and finishes, with red banquette seating, dark wooden floors, table lamps and a black painted bar contrasting with white marble tops, pale walls and antique mirrors.

Upstairs, the first-floor dining room and events space has a more intimate loft feel, with a vaulted ceiling, dark beams and raw brickwork acting as a backdrop to various statement artworks. 

Leading out from the ground floor bar is the King’s House Garden, a 96-cover outdoor space ‘unlike anything else in London’.