The Rake at The Compton Arms, N1

Raking it in.

Four Legs, Belly, Tiella, and now The Rake. Whoever’s picking the resident chefs at The Compton Arms, hats off to them — there hasn’t been a dud among the lot.

The Rake is the latest in a line of excellent residencies at the compact North London pub, which has made its name for food for some years now — well, that and a slightly tenuous claim to be the inspiration for George Orwell’s perfect pub in ‘The Moon Under Water’. The Rake’s menu is ostensibly fish-focussed, though that might be a little overstated — on my latest visit just five of the dishes feature seafood, to four with meat, so it’s not exactly pescatarian.

Still, some of what they do with that seafood is pretty special. A cuttlefish salad nestles thin strips of the seared cephalopod among crisp green leaves in a buttermilk dressing. Plaice is baked whole, soft and forgiving, floating in a pool of buttery tartar sauce jewelled with capers and roe. Cockles and clams are skewered, battered, and deep-fried on their bamboo sticks — delicious, but potentially lethal if you don’t have your wits about you.

Best of all might be The Rake’s trademark dish, though bear with me here: British chicken and waffles. Instead of fried chicken, flaky chunks of ray wing. Instead of waffles, a single, porous crumpet. And instead of maple syrup, a generous drizzle of the golden stuff. It sounds deranged; it works just wonderfully. Served as a starter, it’s small enough not to outstay its welcome, and with enough salty, savoury fish to keep the syrup in check; I find chicken and waffles tends to get sickly and cloying before I’m halfway through, but this only left me wanting more, even after a whole plate to myself.

If that’s one clear standout, the other is altogether simpler. There aren’t many restaurants that get me raving about the bread and butter, but The Rake is one. White bloomer is served in inch-thick slabs, with a soft crust and a bouncy texture. But it plays second fiddle to the cloud of salty, whipped butter alongside, a sickeningly extravagant heap, more than you could ever conceive of spreading across two slices of bread. It’s a small touch, maybe a silly one, but at a few quid for a plate it’s the sort of generous start to a meal that can’t help but set you in good spirits. It’d be hard to have a bad time that starts like this.

I could go on, honestly. A tomato and pomelo salad, sharp spikes of citrus hidden amongst those rarest of things: British tomatoes that truly sing. Shreds of soft lamb pressed into crisp cubes, a blob of bright green sauce to cut the fatty meat. Or a treacle tart that arrives with a teetering tower of cream, both clotted and ice, intermingling in the syrup below. The closest thing to a bum note is a colossal pork chop, grilled expertly but sadly salted within an inch of its life. Even that comes with a high point though, sat atop the only mushy peas I think I’ve ever truly enjoyed eating.

It’s tempting to play the game of comparing The Rake to Tiella, to ask if it’s got more legs than Four Legs. But that’s sort of besides the point. Yes, The Rake sits in a suspiciously successful Compton Arms lineage, but The Compton didn’t make it. The Rake existed before its stint in N1, ran a whole other residency in Hackney’s The Gun, and with any luck will go on to do more afterwards. It’s its own beast, something to celebrate regardless of what came before and whatever comes through here after.

But The Compton, for now, is a wonderful home for The Rake, where you can sit in a sunlit garden, with a cold pint of XPA to wash down your butter, and wonder if this might have been what Orwell had in mind after all.