I really don't know why it took me so long to go to this place, its near where I work, is well priced and has been famous since I was so young that I would have been happy with any food that came with Ketchup. I'm glad I've finally gone but regret all the missed opportunities. I guess that tells you what I thought of the place...

First things first, The Eagle is famous as the first Gastropub, with a food focus since 1992. Thats right - 16 years, which is pretty impressive. I expect there are pubs that would dispute the claim, but it has everything we now associate with the genre- miss-matched cutlery, miss-matched rickety chairs, bare floorboards etc. All of that can be a bit irritating, but its seems more acceptable when your in the original, not in a copy.

I know it has changed hands since the original owners, and based on the fact that their blackboards said “Why not try the Anchor & Hope or Great Queen St?” I suspect there is now a connection, though I haven't ever read that elsewhere. It does have a bit of the feature that makes Anchor & Hope so irritating, namely tables that aren't really designed to eat off, a long wait to get a seat and an atmosphere so noisy you have to shout to be heard by dining companions.

Somehow though I found all that much less annoying than I do at the Anchor & Hope. I thing there are two reasons for it, firstly the wait wasn't anywhere near as long so I didn't get utterly trashed at the bar. OK it was a Tuesday night but it was prime time and even Tuesday's are a nightmare at Anchor & Hope. Secondly I was less concerned because of the prices. If the original Gastropub ideal was about good value, good food then I'm not sure Anchor & Hope meets the first of those demands. Prices there are firmly restaurant, whereas prices at the Eagle are largely less than a tenner for a main course. Maybe its a little hypocritical but I'm not sure, I think I'm justified in being happy to put up with more hassle and less service in a place where I can eat and drink well for less than £20 a head than I am in a place where bills are frequently double that.

Anyway, all of the above would matter not a jot if the food wasn't up to scratch, but as you can tell from the overall tenor, it was. The food here is heavily Mediterranean influenced, there's a lot of grilled fish, all fresh, simple but good. I seem to remember a lot of places like this being quite Italian or Spanish influenced, before everywhere went all Modern British. Its nice to see there's still room for both.

The Eagle is still a pub, serving well kept Charles Wells beer which went down a treat whilst we waited for a table. Its worth noting at this point that the barmaid who served us was happy and helpful throughout, and I had no complaints of the waiter who found us our table and served our food. I only mention this as service gets a bit of a kicking on some of the review sites, and even Charles Campion describes it as “with attitude”. There was no checking from the waiter how we were getting on, and no opportunity to check the wine, but hey this is a pub charging pub prices. At least the wine came with wine glasses!

We'd gone for a bottle of wine with our food from a small wine list chalked up. It may be small but I guess its changed fairly often. It also offers exceptional value and whilst not perhaps terribly exciting, it did have some items of interest and based on our bottle was well chosen. We'd plumped for a Valtorto 06 from the Douro for a bit of a change. This was a very upfront, no oak, plum and cherry mouthful of a wine, it had a bit of complexity on the finish, was good fun and a bargain at £14 in a pub.

There were no starters as such but there were items marked up as tapas that could have been pressed into service. We launched straight into the main courses instead, and I opted for a Rabbit Cacciatoria. Now I looked up that term and found a definition on “Gourmet Britain” (no I hadn't come across it before either) that said it meant huntsman style and in essence denotes the inclusion of wild mushrooms. Wikipedia has a similar definition for al Cacciatore, so I assume its accurate. My version didn't have any wild mushrooms that I noticed but it was delicious. What it did have was tomatoes, anchovies, olives and a bit of heat. It was like a very mild arrabiata but it tasted fresh and went superbly with the rabbit, which I hadn't really expected. The rabbit was wild and would have been a bit on the dry side but the sauce prevented that being a problem. The plus side of it being wild was it was packed with flavour. This was all served on a bed of serviceable mashed potatoe, making it a massive, hearty and altogether successful dish.

My friend had gone for Napoli sausages which came with green lentils. This was more sourcing than cooking I guess, but the sausages were perfectly grilled, crisp on the outside and moist in the middle. They were very spicy and the lentils worked well in taking the edge off. A simple but good dish, again served in a massive portion.

The only dessert on offer was pasteis de neis, the portugese egg tarts. We were both full and we decided to leave them and so we only had a main course. Thats great though, we left full and happy and including the bottle of decent wine we'd spent £17 a head, not counting a couple of beers beforehand. The beers incidentally were less than £3 a head, which believe it or not is pretty good in central London.

This is not haut cuisine, but its tasty, interesting well sourced and well cooked. Its a noisy crammed place but at these prices that makes it a “buzzy atmosphere” rather than bloody annoying. If you haven't been, go here because its cheap and good, if you haven't been for a few years go to remind yourself why we all fell in love with Gastropubs in the first place.