PubChef Food Excellence Awards WINNER - Special Achievement Award
The PMA Team looks at the gastro-legacy of the pub food innovator - Michael Belben.It's easy to forget that the gastropub, a term universally disliked, but just as universally understood, is a relatively recent construct.
The expression would have been meaningless just 15 years ago.
Now consumers know exactly what it refers to: the notion that high-quality, freshly-cooked food can be found in the humble, unpretentious surroundings of a pub.
The romantic idea of the gastropub has become a part of the cultural landscape, a pocket of excellence that has broader marketing appeal.
Marks & Spencer has a gastropub food range, while national broadsheet newspapers publish gastro-guides to enable their readers to discover the best of the breed as they motor sedately through the countryside.
Michael Belben
Venerable food guru Egon Ronay was even moved to come out of publishing retirement 18 months ago to produce a guide to the gastropub, which he saw as a new culinary phenomenon, comparable to the French brasserie in its merging of democratic accessibility and affordable quality.
Many historians regard the founder of the gastropub movement as Michael Belben, who opened the Eagle in London's Farringdon Road with his business partner and chef David Eyre, in 1991.
Certainly, someone else would have come along in the 1990s and seized the chance and the moment by pioneering a "gastro" style of food service in one of the many thousands of unloved pubs that existed in those days. But what wins the Eagle its enduring claim to cultural resonance is the degree to which it caught the essence of the gastropub so perfectly, an operation that would provide a cast-iron template for hundreds of imitations. And as the saying goes, imitation is always the sincerest form of flattery.
For a start, here was proof that lack of space and separate kitchen facilities need not be an impediment to serving great food - its tiny open kitchen provided room for just two chefs prepared to work in close quarters.
Distinctive FoodFrom the Eagle's tiny cooking space emerged a distinctive style of food: fresh, simple and rustic. As The Sunday Times and PubChef food writer Mark Taylor recently wrote: "In the past 15 years, chefs may have come and gone and menus evolved, but the rustic Portuguese and Mediterranean-inspired food is pretty much the same in a menu that changes with each service, but can include mussel linguine, chilli lemon, or Taleggio and dried fig on toast."
Above all, the Eagle still remains unfussy, providing diners with the chilled atmosphere of the boozer but with restaurant-standard food; furniture is an unchallenging mixture of oddments; food is ordered at the bar and a chalk-written daily specials board hangs behind it. The Guardian food critic Matthew Norman described the broad-ranging appeal of the Eagle's style of operation as "a genuine original, the first of its kind, a template, and still one of the best. When it comes to eating out in its widest and most accessible sense, the gastropub - for want of a better expression - is the future."
"Quite why it isn't the past as well is something of a mystery, but pubs serving well-conceived, well-cooked fresh food are Britain's answer to the brasserie, ubiquitous and open to all."
Affordable DiningMichael Belben himself clearly believed that the Eagle was little more than a pragmatic response to a demand for the traditional pub to up its game and provide an affordable dining alternative to the starchy environs of the top-end and even middling restaurant. He says: "What I wanted to do at the Eagle, and I believe we achieved, was to break down that invisible but very off-putting barrier that stands at the entrance of every restaurant proclaiming, 'How much is this going to cost me?'."
He adds: "A pub is where everyone feels comfortable about dropping in and if the food on offer is good enough, and served in a sufficiently relaxed way, folk will stay and eat."
The Eagle's operational style has been copied to such a degree by other pub operators that David Eyre himself jokingly refers to the venue as the "pub stud farm".
Belben himself has gone on to open two more of London's most best-known gastros - the Fox on Paul Street and the Anchor & Hope in Waterloo. Both retain a recognisably pubby atmosphere, with unvarnished floorboards and mix-and-match chairs. One of the pub's general managers defined the spirit of the Belben-style gastro offering in these terms: "Everything about the business is honest and we're not into pomp. Some gastros are more like restaurants because they have linen, wine glasses and water glasses. I think a gastropub is more than just a restaurant in a pub. The main focus [here] isn't on fixtures and fittings - it's about food coming out at an honest, reasonable price."
Michael Belben's simple but powerful ideas have spawned a legion of followers. And many more pubs can still learn a host of useful lessons from his trio of boozers which offer quality nosh on their own terms.
