You really need to talk to the ex-pats,” says K.C. Kulp, co-owner and manager of The Whip, an English-style pub located in the countryside west of Unionville. It is early January, and Kulp, who is not English, is trying to explain why his country tavern is almost always crowded, even on a chilly night like this.
He suggests a good place to start is with an Englishman named Pip. So I make arrangements to meet up with Pip a few nights later.
I am already at the bar when Pip walks in, limping slightly, materializing from the countryside like one of George Smiley’s agents in a John LeCarré cold war novel. While Pip is tall and fit, he is also a looming figure.
We order a couple of pints, and he tells me what he’s about and why he’s here.
Pip—he explains that his real name is George Augustus Philip Auger—is a consulting gamekeeper, and he is in the midst of putting together a local wild bird shoot. No, he can’t tell me for whom, just a major landowner in the area. The idea, he explains, is to create a landscape of hedgerows and grasses and other cover that will allow pheasants and other game birds to nest and feed here, thus creating a natural environment for game bird hunting like they have back in Pip’s native Yorkshire, where his father served as master of the hounds.
“We want the bird life here to be like it should be,” he says. He’s not finished with the job yet, Pip says, but he must first go back to Southern Russia for a few months where he has a similar scheme underway for a Gazprom executive. No, he can’t mention his name, either.
“I like the fact that they have lots of the little touches” right down to the malted vinegar for the chips.
But while he’s still in this area, Pip tells me, he feels very much at home in Kulp’s pub. “This place does have an English look to it,” he says. “The menu is good, and the food is about the same as it is back in England—except there’re no curries.” Curries, he explains, have through the years become as standard in English pubs as bangers and mash, and he really misses not having them.
Pip turns to ask the waitress behind the bar about the health of today’s soup. “I live nearby, so I’m in here a few days a week,” he says. “It’s a friendly place. I think I had my best New Year’s Eve ever here last week.” Pip pauses a moment in reverie, then decides to order the soup.
I return to the Whip a few nights later. It is another cold weekday evening—just about freezing—and a steady drizzle has set in. Inside, there is a roaring fire and already a sizable crowd of diners has gathered, chatting and eating merrily.
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