Features / Pubs
Gregarious Gregory’s growing pub empire
When Ilona Maher chose somewhere to eat a Sunday lunch soon after arriving in Bristol in December, there was only one place for the USA rugby superstar to go: the Bank Tavern.
Standing outside the pub on John Street in the Old City, Maher told her 4.6m followers on Instagram that she had come to England for two reasons: “Number one rugby, number two to get a roast and here’s where we’re doing it.”
After pouring on copious amounts of gravy (which starts to be made on Wednesdays) she called her roast pork with all the trimmings “spectacular, everything I wanted… this is awesome”.
is needed now More than ever
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Maher was yet another satisfied customer at the Bank Tavern which in 2019 was named the best Sunday roast in the UK by the Observer Food Monthly Awards and if anything has got better since then.
Reservations for the whole of 2025 will open at 10am on January 1 and will likely sell out within hours: Bristol’s very own gastronomic Glastonbury.
The Bank landlord, Sam Gregory, is too modest to soak up the adulation for the pub himself, instead like the captain of a rugby team crediting its success to a team effort.
“I have been really fortunate to work with some really creative and passionate people.
“They have all been mental but I feel lucky to have been able to give them a platform to unlock their potential or think, ‘we can get away with this’.”
As his souvenir photo with Maher will attest to, Gregory is here every Sunday for its multiple sittings.
Sam Gregory with rugby superstar Ilona Maher, another happy customer at the Bank Tavern – photo: Bank Tavern
But the Bank is no longer Gregory’s only concern, having spent many of the last few months bringing the Crown in St Jude’s back to life, with big things planned at the Crown in 2025.
Gregory also now runs a tight ship at the Bell in Kingsdown, the Sugar Loaf in Easton, the Nova Scotia on Spike Island and the Rose of Denmark in Hotwells.
Even when he first took on the Bank in 2008 in what was originally just a caretaker role after working at the pub part-time while studying at UWE, Gregory still harboured dreams of following his father into the Royal Navy. “But I got fat!” he laughs.
One of the best nights of the year at the Bank, however, is Trafalgar Day, with Gregory, who grew up in Plymouth, in his element.
So what has changed in the last few years as Gregory has gone from solely running the Bank to slowly taking up multiple pubs across the city?
It started with the Bell on Hillgrove Street, off Jamaica Street, a pub which may officially be located in Kingsdown but for many people represents the spirit of Stokes Croft.
It was a pub where Gregory used to regularly drink in himself. “I just loved the energy in there. It was a really authentic proper boozer…
“I couldn’t believe it was owned by Butcombe. I don’t think Butcombe knew what they had!”
So when the brewery wanted to offload the Bell, Gregory heard about it and eventually took on the pub in the tricky post-Covid period.
“All I do now is provide a bit of support and a bit of direction to what we’re doing.”
Current manager Will arrived at the Bell from Basement 45 “and has taken it stratospheric. He has really crystallised what the Bell is about.”
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The electronic music and ‘Bell bangers’, jungle on Friday nights and drum’n’bass on Saturday, are far removed from the sea shanties at the Nova Scotia, but that is one of Gregory’s talents: to provide a pub that fits seamlessly within the local community.
Installing a skate ramp in the beer garden of the Sugar Loaf on St Mark’s Road would have seemed inconceivable when the pub was best known for its doorstop-sized cheese and onion rolls, but that is what has now been built as well as major renovations taking place inside the building, with more community-driven events being planned.
“The seed has always been there,” Gregory told me over coffee at Full Court Press, just around the corner from the Bank, on a recent morning, when I asked him did taking on the Bell plant an idea for his growing stable of venues?
“I have always loved pubs… You look at the pubs and the communities they’re in and you look at the characters. It’s fascinating from an anthropological point of view.
“When you spend any time in pubs, you get to hear people’s stories, people’s attitudes, the way they see the world.
“Sometimes you think, ‘well that’s fucking weird, how have you come to that?’
“You don’t want to talk too much about politics though if you do, I personally – unless I’ve had five or six pints – don’t like to express my own strong views.
“But it’s nice to scratch away and see how people came to that opinion.”
The Rose of Denmark in Hotwells reopened in October – photo: Rob Browne
Gregory said that his name got “bandied around” among the “media circus and nonsense” about the Bank, which at one stage was declared to have the longest waiting list for any restaurant in the world.
“But with that they have seen the pub and they have seen me,” which led Gregory to form a partnership with the Heineken-owned Star Pubs.
He also had a “brief foray” with a pub in Bath but said he was not able to spend enough time there and felt that it became a distraction with his growing number of pubs in Bristol.
“You’ve got to have a presence and you’ve got to understand what it is that you’ve taken on. You’ve got to understand the dynamics of the area.”
The Crown Tavern on Lawfords Gate was previously run for 30 years by Dominic and Gloria O’Connor, both in their 80s, who sold the building to Gregory.
“The Crown is interesting,” he said. “I know we have mixed things up but things had to be mixed up.
“We have tried to retain the elements of the pub, ultimately it is still a pub, there’s Bass here still. Not for the price it was but that wasn’t sustainable as a business model and the building wasn’t being looked after.
“What I feel we’ve done is to do something that will secure the Crown’s future.”
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Gregory owns the Bell and the Crown, and is the lessee at his other pubs meaning that he has to buy Heineken beers.
He had been offered lots of pubs to take on but has seen an “opportunity” with the trio he runs alongside Star Pubs: “Either for their geography or because they were under-performing in that they were not fulfilling what the community should have.”
The gregarious Gregory said that for too many years, the Rose of Denmark had been a “blackened tooth on the gateway to Bristol” and he wanted to give that pub its smile back.
Like this area of Hotwells with the Western Harbour plans still looming, the area of St Jude’s close to the Crown is also in a state of flux with a major regeneration known as the Frome Gateway due to transform the surrounding streets over the next decade or so.
And it’s just one Bristol community that Gregory will be at the heart of, his own renown, like that of some of his famous customers, spreading far and wide.
Main photo: Rob Browne
This article is taken from the January/February 2025 Bristol24/7 magazine
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