When Nick Bailey opens a pub, you know it’s going to be something special.
I first visited The Robin—formerly The Brave Sir Robin—on a hot day last August to take photos for the pub’s website. I’d known Nick a year or so, from his dwindling tenure as the publican (never landlord—far too feudal) of the iconic and revered Southampton Arms in North London’s Kentish Town.
His reputation carries the weight of decades running pubs, which belies his six-and-change years in the business. Under Nick’s stewardship The Southampton went from a decent pub to an icon of London’s pub scene , regularly packed to the gills and topping various listicles of London’s Best Pubs.
It wasn’t just the beer—independent UK breweries and cider makers only—that lent the Southampton such regard. It was the decor, the microgarden Nick tended around the pub’s small courtyard, the records invariably spinning behind the bar, the pork-and-apple rolls, and his no-nonsense approach. Just good beer, good people, in one space.
Now, at The Robin, Nick has a space entirely his own. Though records are still playing behind a bar as heavily laden with keg taps and cask pumps (a matter of utmost importance to him), crusty rolls are still stuffed with meat and mustard, and plants hang lazily from racks above the bar top, this is much more of him in a physical space.
There are paintings of the Southampton dotted around the walls—including a heartwarming portrait of Clare and James, a pair of beloved elderly regulars—as well as those of other important London pubs, and a bizarre and wonderful mural featuring knights, a wizard, and a horse on human legs. Nick is an eminently stylish man, sharp of dress and wit, and this elegant pub with its green velvet banquettes and warm wood paneling is a testament to a man who deeply cares about hospitality.
This time, I caught Nick for a brief chat before he took a rare evening off; since opening a little over a month ago, the pub’s been busier than he could have hoped—another ringing endorsement. The atmosphere was lively, with a low mist of contented chatter and the sound of clinking glasses filling the air, and Nick was happy, if a little weary. A pub is rarely just a pub—there are always pieces of the people who make them, if you know where to look—and my heart felt so full to be in this space.
Words + Photo by Lily Waite