About 30 Thai restaurants operate out of the back rooms and upstairs lofts of traditional English and Irish pubs in London, BBC Travel reports.

The idea started at The Churchill Arms in Kensington: according to current manager James Keogh, owner Gerry O'Brien, an Irishman who took over in 1985, agreed to a month-long trial in summer 1988 after Thai chef Songkot Boonyasarayon asked to cook in the kitchen; food writer Nick Lander recalls lines around the block within weeks. Thai food was spreading as young Britons backpacked in Thailand in the late 1980s and '90s, and in the early 2000s Thailand's Global Thai campaign offered loans to help Thai citizens open restaurants abroad.

BBC Radio London's restaurant contributor Stephanie Brookes says many of these pubs "rival top restaurants in terms of quality and provenance of ingredients."