As Timeout so rightly points out Gordon Ramsay may never step foot inside this gastropub in Chiswick but its enough that his name is on the pub sign to bring in all-comers. Seeing as how I’m set to head out into the sticks for at least the next couple of months for work I wanted my last meal at the Hammersmith office to be at The Devonshire. The gastropub is located a shortish stroll from Chiswick High Road. You walk past quite a few tempting restaurants on the way but the Ramsay name is a draw that can’t be denied.

The pub is rather large and L-shaped. The front room has two giant comfy (single) chairs and today it was cold enough to justify having a lit fireplace. By the side there are two Scrabble board games (complete with a dictionary) and some dominoes. Walking around the corner you see that down the long length of the pub is a bar and the restaurant. Not much of a comely feeling if you know what I mean but couldn’t tell if that was because the place was very quiet or the decor of the room.

When we arrived for lunch the restaurant was fairly empty – in fact it was just us and another table but we didn’t mind as we were there for the food. Service was attentive and we were given some free bread with gorgeous butter to start.

The Devonshire currently have a set menu deal of 2 courses for £13.50 or 3 for £16.50. The offering on the set menu is limited – two starters, two mains and two desserts – the trade-off I guess for the offer (starters on the a la carte seem to be about £5-£6 and mains £14-£17.) Both Jenny and Caroline went for roasted fig and stilton salad with confit duck and port vinaigrette followed by breast of chicken with caramelised endive creamed potato and rosemary jus whilst I went for something completely different to them in the butternut squash soup with amaretti biscuits and cider glazed salmon, preserved lemon cous cous and spinach.

The food seemed to come out relatively quickly though there was a bit of a lag between the collection of our starters and delivery of our mains. My soup was absolutely delicious and though I thought the squash was sweet the contrast of the the amaretti biscuits actually served to accentuate the differences in the sweetness of the two (with the biscuit obviously being extremely sweet.) I really enjoyed my salmon main which was perfectly cooked though surprisingly the spinach was a touch on the side of salty. Cous cous was delicious and melded well with the preserved lemon. I thought the portion was reasonable without being too generous though I guess some might think that pub food (gastro or not) should err on the side of large so might have something to say about the portion. All I know is that after the two courses I was quite stuffed.

The service was very friendly. Almost too friendly as our waitress must have checked up on us about ten times throughout the meal – sometimes mere seconds after we’d started into our food. Its not like the place was heaving so if we’d really wanted her attention we could have easily flagged her down.

The gastropub is a long way to hike from Central London to sample another one of Gordon’s holdings so was happy to get the chance to do it today. What would have made our experience memorable today, though, would have been an appearance by the big man himself … am I asking too much? 😉