It's a very nasty day today with rain, wind, and low temperatures - so I fancied going to one nearby. The nearest place is an Italian Restaurant which I quite fancied the look of, but for some reason they were fully booked (on a Tuesday lunchtime?). So braving the wind and rain I made it to the next place along: a pub. But the kitchen was - for no given reason - shut.

Damn.

Battling on again and I finally made it to the "Rat and Parrot" chain pub on Holland Park Avenue, appropriately wet as a drowned one. Not quite what I had in mind (pizza, cannelloni, or that pasta dish with a raw egg yolk sitting in the middle), but I'm not complaining: it's a free lunch and it's indoors in the dry and warm.

The Rat and Parrot looks like a recent purpose-built pub and it's surprisingly nice inside - the floor keeps changing levels as you walk towards the back, rising upwards to the bar, and it all has a nice old comfortable feel to it. This is partly because it's a very gloomy day and the pub has insanely few lights on inside (hence the dodgy-quality photos this time), and partly because the wall behind me has been painted with an old, cracked renaissance-style picture of cherubs and mad men and naked women (see the photo at the bottom of the page for a glimpse of this). Not bad for a chain pub.

There isn't too much to choose from on the menu if you want a biggish meal (although I'm told the chips are excellent), but the steak-and-mushroom-and-ale pie takes my fancy, especially as it comes with mash and peas instead of chips and beans - got to watch my figure after all.

Despite ordering at the bar, service is pretty slow due to an unfamiliarity with the touch-screen till, but not too long after my pie, peas, mash, gravy and - in the usual case of "eyes bigger than my stomach" - a toasted garlic and cheese ciabatta. The pie is a fair old size and there's a decent amount of mash and pies, and the entire plateload is utterly drowned in gravy. Luckily enough that's fine by me. The gravy is strange stuff - not like anything you'd make at home with an oxo cube or granules - it's thick, almost a paste. Not unpleasant, just strange. The pie is pretty good - plenty of huge chunks of meat, and pretty tender too - although the pastry tastes suspiciously mass-produced, as if they've used a Fray Bentos tinned meat pie.

The peas and mash are a welcome relief from all this meatiness (as the gravy is pretty strong stuff) - the mash tastes like it's been made with plenty of butter, just how I like it. And it's a fair old plateful too - took me quite a while to get through it all, and by the time I was finished I was stuffed.