Washington offers many gastronomic diversions, but not one flies the British colors quite like CommonWealth, The People’s Gastropub. Really an upscale beer and chips place with quite divine food, CW comes to the 14th Street in the heart of Columbia Heights with its own flash: an outdoor terrace, an indoor bar, plenty of seating, and dark pub colors that belie the charm of the cuisine.

The brainchild of super chef Jamie Leeds — she of Dupont Circle’s very popular Hank’s Oyster Bar, the pub features a menu that’s strictly for food lovers who crave sturdy, albeit probably fattening (but not stodgy), food as a matter of course. And since the subtext here is British with UK beers and ales as liquids of choice, zeroing in on fish and chips as the main course with a round of Scotch eggs as starters seems in the spirit. What ho, and all that.

If you have never tried Scotch eggs, and probably not many among us have, think of them as tidy, deep-fried cholesterol packets consisting of shelled hard-boiled eggs wrapped in ground sausage meat and then dipped in a breadcrumb coating. Of course, these are then plunged into bubbling hot fat to deep-fry the outer crust to a luscious crunchiness, made all the more tempting by your dipping pieces of the Scotch eggs into a creamy dipping sauce. You’ll find two eggs to the order, and maybe you’ll want to share, but chances are, you won’t.

Of course, while you are munching on the eggs, you can wash them down with steins (flasks? flagons? mugs?) of British ale, dark and frothy. You can also mop up any extra dipping sauce with wedges of the freshly sliced grainy bread, and when this first course is polished off, you could call it a day.

On the other hand, you really can’t, because before you know it, your order of fish and chips — very hotly battered and very hotly deep-fried — comes to the table. It’s too late to change, but you may realize that gluttony overcame common sense: delicious as the battered sweet fish nuggets are, they tend to be a bit greasy, not the best choice for countering caloric overload, especially if you have your eye on the prize: sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

The crown jewel of all British desserts, this luscious caramel-drenched “cake” — it’s called pudding, but certainly not in the American sense of a dessert that’s mostly custard, sticky toffee pudding is richly sweet, a balm to the sweet tooth and perhaps worth a trip to CommonWealth just for its sake. Traditionally composed of dates, eggs, flour, and sugar, the mixture gets bathed in a rich caramel, or toffee, sauce made with butter, brown sugar, and heavy cream. What’s so bad about that — except for the calorie count?

But before you order, check the day’s specials, and certainly consider any one of the following from the standard menu: chicken pot pie, a steak and oyster pie, London broil with Worcestershire sauce, Cumberland bangers and mash with onion gravy, and sides of Yorkshire pudding and “bubble and squeak.” For something a little more Yankeefied, you could select a burger, roasted half chicken, or roasted trout. On the other hand, with so many Brit choices at hand, why squander your mealtime on food you can find elsewhere?

As you emerge from the Green Line metro station at 14the and Irving Streets, you may be surprised to find that things are looking a bit, well, different. Imagine spotting a British-style pub cozying up next to a Caribbean joint and a sake bar-and across the street from a Target big box store. Times they are a changing, and CW is carrying the banner.

CommonWealth, The People’s Gastropub / 1400 Irving St., NW; (202) 265-1400. Hours: Mon.-Thu. 11:30am-11pm; Fri., 11:30am-12mid; Sat., 11am-12mid; Sun. 11am-11pm. Credit cards accepted. Entrée price range: $11-$18.