Ale & Hearty

Sociability is what British restaurants are really about. I’m not referring to fish and chip shops or roaste beefe palaces where the waitresses wear mobcaps, but to the cozy sort of place that has a long British beer list, a dartboard and usually a couple of TVs tuned to sports channels. Every real British restaurant in the Southland is basically a pub.

And we do have our share of pubs around here, because California and Florida are the preferre destinations of British immigrants. That doesn’t mean that you’ll always hear a lot of foreign accents in these places, though. Accents fade with time, and the second generation will automatically sound like Californians.

It’s fair to say that most of these places make more fuss about their beer than their food, featuring as many two dozen imports on tap. But they’re always friendly, comfortable joints where, no matter what foodies say about British cuisine, you can nearly always find something worth tucking into.

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The waitresses seem thrilled to be working at Cat & Fiddle. This cheerful Hollywood hangout has a garden patio dining area and often hosts jazz concerts. It’s a British pub with cool.

It also has the most sophisticated pub kitchen. The homemade cream of tomato soup (with rice) is tangy with tomato flavor. Though carrots get somewhat over-boiled here, broccoli is always fashionably al dente. And the bangers are really excellent--the kitchen makes its own meaty pork sausages.

Most steak and kidney pies are just meat baked in crust, where they produce thin meat juices, but the Cat & Fiddle’s filling incorporates a rich, meaty gravy. The shepherd’s pie is the most authentic around, because the filling contains ground lamb as well as ground beef (technically speaking, when shepherd’s pie is made with beef, it’s cottage pie), and it has an attractive hint of curry. The nightly specials often include British regional dishes such an authentic Lancashire hotpot: lamb chops and onions dosed with black pepper stewed under a “crust” of sliced potatoes. It’s pretty close to a French navarin d’agneau, except that the potatoes get lightly browned.

The dessert list is blessedly short. There’s an apple and raisin crumble, which is quite good if you ask for it with cream instead of custard sauce. And there’s the usual canned-fruit trifle.* Cat & Fiddle Pub, 6530 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 468-3800.

Ye Olde King’s Head is big and warm and cozy--and it jumps, all five rooms of it. This busy place decorated with brewery signs and animal horns is clearly where Santa Monica’s British expats hang out.

It makes a good, faintly spicy Scotch egg and a ghastly Welsh rarebit in a sticky sauce resembling Cheez Whiz. The steak and kidney pie, topped with puff pastry, has plenty of kidney flavor; the Cornish pasty has a plain hamburger filling.

The best entree is the shepherd’s pie, which has a little tomato in the filling, making it like a sort of moussaka topped with quite good mashed potatoes. In fact, the potato is treated respectfully in all its forms here, though the innocent carrot is boiled to utter and final ruin.

Of all the British places, Ye Olde King’s Head is the only one that makes a trifle with any discernible Sherry flavor in its canned fruit layer. Its bread pudding drowned in custard sauce will probably be too starchy for anybody who didn’t grow up on it.

* Ye Olde King’s Head, 116 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. (310) 451-1402.

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A couple of blocks up the street is the Britannia, a tiny pub with a small dining room upstairs. It probably has the highest concentration of TV screens per square foot of any pub. It makes competent versions of steak pie and shepherd’s pie, and if you want to try British food at its starchiest, order the sausage rolls: two incredibly stodgy banger sausages baked in puff pastry (imagine turkey stuffing in pastry). And they’re served with baked beans and French fries.

* The Britannia, 318 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 458-5350.

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Until you get to the last page of the menu, you might not guess the Crown and Anchor is a British pub. Up to that point you’ll only see the sort of food you’d expect at an American sports bar, which this place basically is--it’s festooned from wall to wall with NFL symbols. This is a very popular joint, one of the hardest places in Thousand Oaks to get into on a Friday or Saturday.

But it does have British food, and some of the best. After a good Scotch egg and a tiny pork pie with a pleasant Spam-like filling, you can move on to a shepherd’s pie with a hint of cheese (and maybe pork sausage) in the ground beef filling, or a mild Cornish pasty filled with beef, peas and carrots. The most valuable player is the steak and kidney pie, which is even meatier than the Cat & Fiddle’s. The kitchen will cook your French fries good and brown if you ask, and there’s a catsup dispenser of Houses of Parliament Sauce on every table.

The desserts are the usual trifle, pie and fruit crumble selection, all in custard sauce. The trifle does have the distinction of being sprinkled with “hundreds and thousands,” which are tiny, crunchy English candy sprinkles.

* The Crown and Anchor Sports Pub and Grub, Skyline Plaza, 2891 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. (805) 497-0070.

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The Robin Hood Pub in Van Nuys is a friendly, family sort of place--there may be a baby perambulator or two about--with about 50 darts trophies posted on a rafter. Its kitchen is relatively ambitious. For instance, with a Sunday pork roast, it may serve roasted potatoes, perfectly done cauliflower, a sweet carrot puree and an applesauce-like chutney.

The warming tomato soup is a coarse puree of fresh tomatoes spiked with Parmesan. The steakand kidney pie is, for once, a real pie with a bottom as well as a top crust. The shepherd’s pie, whichadds celery to the usual peas and carrots in the beef filling, is still rather bland and needs the little cruet of gravy that comes with it.

Here the trifle actually has a discernible cake element; the bottom layer is cubes of cake held together with gelatin. An Indian woman told me, “This is my mother’s idea of heaven: cake,gelatin, cream, custard, canned pears and grapes. She’d say, ‘Oh, how English!’ ” How true.

* Robin Hood Pub, 13640 Burbank Blvd., Van Nuys. (818) 994-6045.

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A couple of miles east in Burbank, the Buchanan Arms makes no secret that it leans to the north. The Scottish tartans on the walls of this neat, pretty place are sort of a giveaway. It often has cockie-leekie soup (here, chicken and rice) and always features the Scottish bridie, which tastes a bit like sausage meat spiked with Scotch in puff pastry. You can get bridies, Cornish pasties and some other foods to take home at an adjoining shop.

The best items are the potato soup (the potato chunks not at all overcooked), the shepherd’s pie (topped with a slice of cheese) and the roast beef, which comes with peas, wonderfully buttery mashed potatoes, pungent horseradish sauce and an eggy Yorkshire pudding. The steak and kidney pie is plain but absolutely fresh. It’s cooked to order; allow 30 minutes.

The French fries are ostentatiously handmade, cut in wildly differing sizes and shapes. At dessert, the best things are rhubarb pie (hold the custard) and a very good cheesecake with a caramel and walnut topping.

* The Buchanan Arms British Style Restaurant & Pub, 2013 Burbank Blvd., Burbank. (818) 845-0692.

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Pasadena’s own pub, the John Bull, is a big, worn, boxy place with pew-like benches instead of chairs. Food feels like an afterthought here, but there are a few nice touches, such as red onions in the steak and mushroom pie. Carrots get ruined in the usual manner, though the mixed vegetables are perfectly cooked. And the cherry crisp is actually a little crisp, if you have them hold the custard sauce.

* John Bull British Pub and Restaurant, 958 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena. (626) 441-4353.

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Orange County has a charming pub in the Olde Ship. Despite a rather insistent nautical motif, it really feels like a British pub, rather than a theme restaurant. This (along with the 20-odd British beers on tap) must be why it draws a clientele that sounds decidedly British. The roast beef is good, the excellent bridie quite beefy. The steak and kidney pie has a distinctive dose of Worcestershire sauce and black pepper. This place serves a pretty extensive English breakfast and tea as well as lunch and dinner.

* The Olde Ship, 709 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton. (714) 871-7447.