Kensington’s Blue Stoops looks like a pub and thinks like a pub – so it must be a pub

The Blue Stoops, 127-129 Kensington Church Street, London W8 7LP. Bar snacks £4-£12, starters £6-£15, mains £19-£26, desserts £10-£12, wines from £38

There are many who believe a true pork scratching should be a challenging affair; that you should stumble across the odd one so rich in bristles you don’t know whether to eat it or comb it. There should be others that present an invitation to suckle. The pork scratchings at the Blue Stoops in Kensington are, like the street it occupies, rather more refined. No deep-fried nipples here. The pig skin has been scraped of fat, simmered then dehydrated, before being puffed up on service to a hand’s length in the deep fat fryer. They arrive, salt and chilli-dusted and still warm, tucked into a beer glass, looking like some creamy-coloured mineral accretion dug out of a cave. They have crunch and a pleasing collagen stickiness and are more like a Mexican chicharrón than a friendly tooth-destroyer from the Black Country.