Restaurant review The Pig and Butcher, London.

Before the Pig and Butcher turned up, there was a pub on Liverpool Road called the Islington Tap. It was rather good, with decent ales, friendly staff and an inoffensive clientele. But on its main window was a strip of verbs instructing potential customers on what to do: "Eat. Drink. Chat. Party. Laugh."

The Tap is no more, and quite why I couldn't begin to guess. But two things always struck me about its rules. First, it was a breach of the unspoken contract between publican and patrons – come into my house, pay your way and do as you please, within reason – that made English public houses the envy of the world; and second, it was the inevitable consequence of a new puritanism and health zealotry in which emissaries of the State tell us not to smoke, drink excessively, or eat the wrong kind of quinoa. It was as if the Tap had taken those warnings now on cigarette packets, and applied them to a pub setting.

In direct, pleasing and probably intentional contrast, its successor advertises no such instructions. And that it is a magnificent public house – from the people behind the Princess of Shoreditch and the Lady Ottoline, with excellent cocktails and a reasonable wine list – is doubtless related.

A short, sublime menu full of meat butchered on site completes the victory. There are six starters, eight mains, four desserts and a cheese board.

To start, Matt gets the monkfish scampi and aioli (£6.95), Charlie gets the red and white endive with home-cured bacon and blood pudding (£8.95), and I get the goose rillettes with cornichons and toast (£5.95). It is a triple triumph.

The batter on the monkfish is a little too greasy, and couldn't be described as light; but the fish inside is moist and muscular and stands up well to the aioli, whose quotient of garlic could be fatal to a post-dinner smooch. The endives, meanwhile, are crisp, the bacon comes in giant salty lardons, and the blood pudding has a very rich but not bullying flavour. And my goose rillettes are ideal: neither completely smooth nor so rough as to demand prolonged chewing. The cornichons are wrinkled and pungent. The only letdown is the plain brown toast, being an inch deep, which is too thick for the rillettes, and hogs precious space in our stomachs.

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