The Pearl, by Phoebe Patrick
Conversations holed up at the bar can lead to a whole lot of grand plans, most of which never truly come to fruition. Luckily for best mates and business partners Ronnie Aronica and Jack Wakelin, chatting shit over post-service drinks at Public led to the masterplan that we now know and love as Bench.
“We just always knew there was going to be a massive bench in the middle” Ronnie tells me when asked about how the name came to be. When Bench was starting its life as a pop-up, Jack and Ronnie wanted to activate spaces that weren’t hospitality venues. One of these spaces was Swallows & Damsons flower shop. Despite the fire alarm going off midway through their first ever service, Ronnie tells me “that might be my favourite meal I’ve ever cooked”. Following a successful crowd-funder, Bench found its home in an old post office in Nether Edge, where it has become established as a neighbourhood restaurant and wine bar.
Fast forward a few years and we now get to enjoy Jack and Ronnie’s next venture, The Pearl at Park Hill, which has just been joined by neighbour Bench La Cave, a wine bar, bakery and restaurant. “Providing people’s livelihoods is nice”, says Jack, who is behind the drinks offering across the sites, when asked what his vision is for Bench and beyond.
Whilst people are at the core of what the guys are trying to do here, sitting amongst the iconic Park Hill it’s hard to ignore the surroundings that enclose you. The New Brutalist enclaves sprawl up the hill as you leave Sheffield train station, connected by sky-high walkways shrouded in over 60 years’ of history which almost haunts the atmosphere of the place.
The austere ambience is the perfect backdrop for a drinking hole. Having been home to many estate boozers over the years - some of the roughest in Britain according to Danny Dyer’s Toughest Pubs - Jack and Ronnie’s vision for The Pearl and La Cave is quite literally to bring this part of the estate back to life.
Pearl the ghost, the bar’s mascot, encapsulates this, lost between the pubs of the 60s and coming back to breathe new life into the space. Inspired by the Pacman ghost, Ronnie jokes that Pearl “could quite easily be a skate brand”. At first I didn’t get the ghostly branding. I’d come to know the pared-back, minimal vibe of Bench so well, that something so stylised felt like a disconnect. However, sitting here on the edge of Park Hill, I felt haunted, like the years of lawless history were seeping out of the dark corners of the estate just waiting to hole up in a bar somewhere and tell you their secrets. The ghost of estate pubs past; The Earl George, The Parkway Tavern, The Scottish Queen and The Link, coming back and bringing a new energy.
This new energy comes along in the form of a cocktail menu that takes us through a day in the life of Pearl the ghoul going from day into dusk into night between the streets in the sky of Park Hill. The mid-century martini nods to the history of the place, with British Coconut Cream washed Gin made with local fig leaves. Other cocktails include the aptly named “Dizzy New Heights”, christened after the Streets song. Sipping this evokes the album cover of a similar housing estate and I can’t help but think about how well thought-out everything is here.
Alongside the drinks, head chef Hannah Hall curates a menu of ‘bar snacks’, which as a name seems to do a slight disservice to the elegance of Hannah’s cooking. She ages beef in-house for 45 days to go into the tartare, which is paired with anchovy mayo and sat on top of beef dripping toast for the perfect bite. The daily changing menu breathes new life into old classics, much like what The Pearl is doing to the estate.
Hannah is, as she says so herself, “pretty new to cheffing”. As I chat to her over the open pass, she recalls staring out of her office window in her previous life thinking, “if I don’t leave now, I’m never going to do this”. So she started out doing KP work before going on to kitchen shifts and now The Pearl. “I just pestered them for a job”, Hannah jokes, “I made no secret I wanted to work for them. I said to Jack, I’ll do deliveries, I’ll do owt!”. The passion she has for her craft shines through the menu, cooked from a small but mighty open kitchen overlooking the estate. When I visit, guests can eat things like a cheese toastie with quince hot sauce, or a devilled egg, or of course a dozen oysters.
Whilst Carlingford oysters may seem a far cry from the cockle man that used to roam the estate’s pubs back in the day, there’s a continuation of wanting to bring people together that lives on through The Pearl, and there’s something momentous in that. This is the first pub in Park Hill for decades and yes, the estate has evolved and changed, but as Ronnie says, “if you don’t like gentrified areas of Sheffield, there’s plenty that aren’t”. Meanwhile, Park Hill is benefitting from an influx of residents and local businesses, including The Pearl and Bench La Cave, that are gradually rebuilding a sense of community here. I don’t see how that can be a bad thing at all.
Phoebe Patrick is based in Manchester (UK) and works at Flawd.