Bench duo to launch The Pearl at Park Hill in Grade II-listed Sheffield housing estate
Due to open next month, The Pearl at Park Hill will offer a seasonal, ever-changing cocktail menu, craft beer and natural wine alongside pintxos-inspired bar snacks.
“We feel honoured to be taking on a site with such cultural history in the city. Being the largest listed building in Europe, we feel a responsibility to offer something for the community, the city, and beyond,” says Jack Wakelin, who together with chef Tom ‘Ronnie’ Aronica launched Bench in the midst of the pandemic.
“We are really proud of the drinks programme at Bench and the opportunity to do something even more drinks-led; harking back to our formative days at Public is a prospect we are super excited about.”
The Pearl at Park Hill will be much larger than the diminutive Bench with around 70 covers inside and a further 100 covers outside.
Completed in 1961 and now Grade-II listed, Park Hill was home to four pubs when it was built to provide modern housing for the workforce of the city’s steelworks.
The Parkway, The Scottish Queen, The Link and The Earl George played a crucial role in forming and sustaining the communities which flourished there in years to follow and the team behind The Pearl ‘take their responsibility seriously’ as the first drinks led venue to open on the site since its purchase in 2004 and regeneration by developer, Urban Splash.
Aronica will take inspiration from Spanish and Italian dining styles ‘to push the boundaries of what the classic pub offers’.
“We don’t have any ventilation and we don;’t have an oven either. We will work off two hobs. I eventually want to do small plates but we will launch with just bar snacks. We really want this to be a platform to showcase some of the suppliers we’ve worked with since opening Bench, such as Carlingford oysters and Curing Rebel’s charcuterie. Simple, beautiful ingredients and produce, treated well,” he says.
The pair began working together at Public in 2017, the cocktail bar within a converted public toilet in Sheffield City Centre and were instrumental in it being named the ‘Best Place to Drink in the UK’ at the Observer Awards 2018.
Launched in October 2020 in Sheffield’s Nether Edge area, the 24-cover Bench features on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars List.
