The Tallyman is bringing the East End pub back to the water
At lunchtime on Chancellor Passage, you can get a lobster roll through a hatch. Later, the same hatch serves oysters and English sparkling wine. A few steps away, there’s steak and ale pie in the dining room and a piano in the pub. It’s an unusually good collection of reasons to stop by a single stretch of Canary Wharf waterfront.
Opened in September, The Tallyman is a new East London pub from the team behind Faber in Hammersmith, The Somers Town Coffee House near King’s Cross and The Victoria in Mile End. Chef Craig Johnson’s menu brings together British seafood, familiar pub cooking and a changing specials board, while the bar gives cask ale and British beer their due..
A local on Chancellor Passage
Before it was a pub name, a tallyman was someone who kept count of cargo on the docks, working between dock workers, shipowners and customs officials. The name gives the pub a connection to the working waterfront that preceded the office towers. The terrace puts the water back in view, while inside, dark wood and handcrafted stained glass lend some warmth to the modern surroundings.
Co-founder Anthony Pender and the team have brought different parts of their other businesses to Canary Wharf. The Victoria gives them a grounding in East End pub life, The Somers Town Coffee House is another London local with a kitchen of its own, and Faber brings the seafood. Here, those strands sit under one roof, with a bar for a quick pint, a dining room for a longer lunch and enough going on to give people who live and work nearby a reason to return. The plans for live music, quizzes and residents’ nights are as much a part of that idea as Sunday roasts.
From the specials board to the seafood hatch
Johnson’s menu has the reassuring orders of a pub menu in place. Fish and chips come with a wally, steak and ale pie comes with mash and greens, and there’s a cheeseburger for the person who decided what they wanted before sitting down. Alongside them are Maldon oysters, brill and a cheddar and onion tart with parsley liquor. That last detail, a nod to London’s pie-and-mash shops, is a small but telling choice for a pub drawing on its East End setting.
The dining room’s changing board gives the kitchen room to follow the seasons and cook outside the regular menu. On The Knife's visit, that meant a warming Irish stew, which was savoured between a starter of eel, white beans and samphire, and a Guinness cake with a lovely jug of custard. The food was excellent, and the warmth of the front-of-house team made as much of an impression as anything that came out of the kitchen.
Outside, the Seafood Shack makes the Faber connection explicit. The lobster roll has travelled east from Hammersmith, where it became a fixture of Faber’s Lobster Lunch Club. On Chancellor Passage, it shares the lunchtime hatch with caviar on chips. Later in the day, the shack switches to freshly shucked Maldon oysters, caviar and English sparkling wine by the glass. It’s a clever use of the passage, giving the kitchen a way to serve people who have time for a roll by the water and those who want to linger over oysters.
A reason to come back on Sunday
The weekday lobster roll is made to take away, but the Sunday lunch gives you a reason to pull up a chair. The dining room serves it from noon until six, and the seafood that runs through Johnson’s weekday menu turns up here, too. You could start with Maldon oysters and shallot vinegar, or cured trout with flame-cooked beetroot and cherries, before the roast potatoes even reach the table.
Roast sirloin comes with a Yorkshire pudding, while braised venison shoulder is the one that catches the eye. There’s Fosse Farm chicken, and a mushroom pie too, with roast potatoes, carrots, cabbage and gravy served across all four. Cauliflower cheese and cider-braised leeks are there for the table, if needed. And if lunch runs long enough for pudding, there’s cherry pie with cream or the now legendary, aforementioned Guinness cake with custard.
The Tallyman takes its name from a man who once counted cargo on the docks. What Pender, Johnson and the team are building here has more to do with the people who use the waterfront now. That’s the more interesting prospect for this new pub, give it a few Sundays, midweek lunches or after work dinners, and it might become the place where someone in the group simply says, "Same table next week?"
