Bull & Last, Highgate Road: A Heath-Side Gastropub With Rooms Upstairs

Bull & Last stands at 168 Highgate Road, London NW5 1QS, on the eastern side of Hampstead Heath, and its beer-battered haddock with triple-cooked chips and mushy peas costs £26. Joe Swiers and Ollie Pudney took over the pub in 2008, closed it in October 2018 for a long refurbishment, and reopened it as a gastropub with seven guest rooms. The kitchen serves lunch from 12pm every day.

The refurbishment had a date behind it. The publisher of the pub's cookbook, White Fox, wrote in January 2022 that Swiers and Pudney planned the work to mark 300 years since the first mention of the pub in local records, and to restore Bull & Last to its roots as a coaching inn by adding rooms on the top floors. They called time in October 2018, aiming to reopen in spring 2020, and White Fox notes it turned out to be a memorable year in more ways than one.

The Camden New Journal described the starting point in April 2024: a 150-year-old, run-down pub in Dartmouth Park that the pair took on nearly 16 years earlier. What reopened is a ground-floor pub, a first-floor restaurant and seven en suite bedrooms named after figures such as John Keats, Michael Faraday and Dido Belle, with design nods to nearby Kenwood House.

The menu changes daily, and the dinner sheet dated Friday 16 October shows the range. Starters include buttermilk fried chicken with aioli at £15, fried squid with tempura pickles and tartare at £15, and a terrine of Suffolk chicken, Old Spot pork, Agen prune and hazelnut with chutney at £17. Truffle and chestnut ravioli with Wigmore fondue is £19, and a fish board to share is £36.

For mains, the haddock is the pub classic at £26, with a pickled onion, which the menu calls a wally, for £2 more. North Essex Shorthorn onglet with béarnaise and chips is £33, slow-cooked wild venison in shortcrust pastry £28, and the salmon, smoked haddock and king prawn fish pie £28. The headline is the Suffolk chicken, mushroom, leek and tarragon pie for two at £50.

Sundays run lunch straight into dinner, with the kitchen open from 12pm to 8pm. The menu dated Sunday 11 October listed roast sirloin of native Shorthorn beef with Yorkshire pudding at £33, Old Spot porchetta with apple sauce and salsa verde at £33, and an aubergine parmigiana wellington at £28. Roast Suffolk chicken for two is £78, and the prime rib for two is £98.

Extras are priced separately: cauliflower cheese £6.50, extra gravy £4 and an extra Yorkshire pudding £1.50. The same Sunday sheet sells a beef broth dog biscuit for £2, which tells you the pub expects muddy dogs off the Heath. A discretionary 12.5% service charge is added, and filtered still or sparkling water costs £2 for the whole table.

The cheapest way in is the weekday set lunch, two courses for £20 or three for £25 from Monday to Friday, with a set dinner on Monday and Tuesday at £25 or £30. The current set lists Welsh mussels with confit tomato and focaccia toast, confit Iberico pork belly with apple and choucroute, and a Miyagawa satsuma granita to finish.

Wednesday is Pie and Pint Night. On 14 October it was two courses for £30 or three for £35, with a free pint or a 125ml glass of house wine, and the chicken pie for two and the venison pastry on the main list. Tables of seven or more are moved to a seasonal group set menu, so a large Sunday party should plan around that rather than the à la carte.

The pub says its beer list is dominated by British breweries, especially London ones, and it works with Five Points Brewery, which brews the house pale ale, So Solid Brew. Timothy Taylor Landlord is £6 on the dinner sheet, and Goldtooth vermouth with soda is £6. The vermouth also sells by the bottle at £18 to take home, along with the Bull & Last cookbook at £15.

The wine list dated 15 October leans on European producers with a minimal-intervention slant. The cheapest white by the glass is a Tenuta Aurea Friulano at £9.50 for 175ml, and the cheapest red is the Aribayos Tempranillo at £10.50. The house Côtes du Rhône, made for the pub by Domaine de l'Amandine, is £49 a bottle, or £28 as a takeaway bottle.

Tables book through SevenRooms from the pub's website. Dinner runs Monday to Saturday from 6pm to 10pm, while weekday lunch is 12pm to 3pm and Saturday lunch 12pm to 4pm. For a celebration, the whole pub can be hired for up to 110 people, or the first-floor restaurant for 55, and the rooms book separately through the website.

This is not a cheap pint stop. With mains at £26 to £33, sharing dishes at £50 to £98 and 12.5% service on top, dinner for two easily passes £100 before wine. If you only want a quick drink after a walk, the bar is fine, but the dining room is the point. On a budget, the weekday set lunch at £20 is the honest choice.

The pub's room descriptions lean on its neighbour: 800 acres of Hampstead Heath across the road and Kenwood House, the stately home at the Heath's northern end. A walk across the Heath to Kenwood and back makes the obvious morning before a Sunday roast, and dogs are clearly welcome back at the pub afterwards.

Highgate Road runs north from Kentish Town towards Highgate, so the pub is reachable from the Northern line or the Overground at Gospel Oak, with the Heath along one side of the walk. Breakfast is also served, from a 2026 menu on the website, which makes it a natural meeting point for an early Heath walk with friends staying in the rooms upstairs.

Address: Bull & Last, 168 Highgate Road, London NW5 1QS. Pub hours: Monday to Thursday 12pm to 11pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 12am, Sunday 11am to 10.30pm. Kitchen: lunch 12pm to 3pm on weekdays, 12pm to 4pm on Saturday and 12pm to 8pm on Sunday; dinner 6pm to 10pm Monday to Saturday.

Who it suits: Heath walkers with dogs, Sunday roast groups, and couples who want a proper pie for two. Who it does not suit: anyone after cheap pub grub or a quiet drink on a busy Sunday. Prices above are from the pub's dated October 2026 menus and wine list. Ask the Karpo APP for another north London pub if the Sunday tables are gone.