The Eagle Farringdon: where the gastropub was invented, in 1991

The Eagle has a claim almost no pub in London can make: the gastropub started here. Not as a marketing line, but as a thing that happened in a room on Farringdon Road in 1991 and then spread across the country.

Checked on the venue’s own site on 9 September 2026. It is at 159 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3AL.

How it happened, in the pub’s own account

It was founded in 1991 by Michael Belben, a restaurant manager, and David Eyre, a chef, who wanted to open a restaurant and could not afford one. The timing did the rest: the government had just broken the brewers’ hold on pub ownership, and pubs at the time served expensive beer, forgettable wine and, in the pub’s own summary, rubbish food.

What they did instead was put restaurant ingredients and restaurant skill into a pub, at pub prices. The cookbook that came out of it was called Big Flavours and Rough Edges, which is as good a description of the whole category as anyone has managed since. The Eagle turned thirty in January 2021.

Three head chefs in thirty five years

Since 1991 the kitchen has had three head chefs: David Eyre, then Tom Norrington Davies, then Edward Mottershaw, who has run it since 2004. For a London kitchen that is close to unheard of.

There is room for two chefs a shift and no more, which is why the menu is short and why, as the pub puts it, everyone who works there gets to influence it. A good number have left to open their own places.

The menu is chalked twice a day, five minutes before service

That is the part to understand before you go. The board is written twice daily, five minutes before service, and everything is cooked to order by those two chefs at up to a meal a minute.

So dishes from the same order arrive at different times. The pub asks you not to stand on ceremony and to eat yours when it comes. Waiting politely for everyone is how you eat it cold.

Opening hours, and the Sunday trap

Kitchen: Monday to Saturday, 12 to 3 and 6.30 to 10.30. Sunday, 12 to 3 only.

Bar: Monday to Saturday, 12 to 11. Sunday, 12 to 5.

Sunday is the one that catches people: no evening kitchen and the bar shut at five, in a part of London where you would reasonably expect a long Sunday. Larger tables, minimum five and maximum ten, are booked by phone on 020 7837 1353, and the pub asks that you call between 9am and midday or between 3pm and 6pm rather than during service.

Eastcheap Records and Clays on Moorgate carry the evening on when this shuts, and best bars in London covers the rest.