Maria and Scott Hunter to open Pig’s Head in Clapham next month
The couple, who were behind Noble Inn’s venues including The Princess of Shoreditch, The Pig & Butcher and the Smokehouse restaurants, have partnered with their Pig & Butcher team Michael Chan and Jack Ross who will head up the kitchen and front of house respectively.
Located on the site of former Clapham pub The Rectory, Pig’s Head will open on 8 November with a 60-cover bar area and 40-cover dining room with an open-plan farmhouse kitchen.
Described as a ‘pro-planet’ pub will have a sustainable approach with all meat used butchered on site and native animals supplied by farmers using regenerative methods. Around half the menu will be dedicated to plant-based dishes using native produce from family-run farms.
Chan’s daily-changing a la carte menu will feature dishes such as rock oyster ‘hot pot’ with lamb sauce, crispy lamb and confit potato; homemade black pudding, crispy potato and broken egg; chicken leg with chicken fat friend cauliflower and bacon crisps; and crispy pig’s head, pickled Aweside Farm rainbow radish and creamed leeks.
There will also be ‘elevated drinking food’ such as isharing boards of Paddock Farm Scotch egg, crispy chicken skin, frickles, sweet potato chip butty, smoked turnip dip, bacon jam, crostini and dining room pickles; and vegan and vegetarian dishes such as baked bean terrine, tomato jam and piccalilli; and coal-roasted squash, burnt orange, kale and pumpkin seed ‘ricotta’.
The pub promises carbon neutral dining using 100% sustainable electricity and cleaned with 100% biodegradable chemicals. It will compost on site, avoiding the emissions of transporting food waste, with the compost being made available to guests, local residents, or local allotments.
"We’d been looking for a site on which to open a business with Jack and Michael for a couple of years and jumped at this spot,” say the pair.
“It’s a great site and Clapham Old Town has the vibrant village vibe that we were looking for. We firmly believe the future of sustainability rests on not persuading people to become vegan but for people to eat much less meat and fish and for this meat and fish to be of a very high quality. That’s why we source whole native animals from local farms with outstanding husbandry and, as with Smokehouse and The Pig and Butcher, we will butcher in house.
“We can’t wait to open the doors and see what people make of it.”
The pub is one of a number of new and planned hospitality openings in Clapham Old Town. MEATliquor recently opened a restaurant in the site that was formerly home to pub The Yard, and pasta brand Lina Stores is lining up the previous home to Robin Gill's The Dairy and Counter Culture restaurants for another of its restaurants.
