Room 101 - the dishes chefs would ban

Pub chefs give us their views on the dishes they want banned from pub menus

Adrian Jones

executive chef, Spencer Arms, Putney, London

Foam. I hate foam - what does mushroom foam mean? Just give me a mushroom! Technically, it's just flavoured bubbles. If you could go out and buy a bag of flavoured bubbles in the shops, would you? No. I think it's the new purée. I was once given baby carrot pureé and I thought why? Baby carrots are lovely. There's no need to mash them all up like baby food. What's wrong with just giving me a baby carrot? It's like the Emperor's new clothes, isn't it? I can't wait until the foam obsession passes.

Mathew Shropshall

chef/patron, Royal Oak, Kings Bromley, Staffordshire

Battered and deep-fried. You go to some pubs and everything on the menu is battered and deep-fried - even if it doesn't need to be. Mushrooms, buffalo wings, sausages... the list is endless. But the culture of the customer is changing - they want to know where food comes from now and the "out of the freezer into the fryer" mentality will have to change. There are a lot of pubs doing great things - we're starting our own organic vegetable garden - and I think customers expect more.

Nigel Ramsbottom

owner/head chef, the Swan, Monks Eligh, Suffolk

Sandwiches. Why do people go out to buy a sandwich, when it's the one thing most people can do perfectly well at home? It's the same with jacket potatoes. Why bother going out for a jacket potato? Sometimes the menu itself irritates me. If it's laminated, you just know it's the same one they've been using, day in and day out, for years. And usually it's the same kind of place where you're guaranteed to get everything in sachets

- salt, pepper, sauce. It just takes away from the whole dining

experience.