Nothing, says Andrew Jefford, lowers the standard of pub food more than the dreariness, tedium and mediocrity of the food offer in pub chains
As autumn leaves flutter from the trees, new books tend to tumble from the presses - in the hope that they'll be swept up by Santa and stuffed into sacks for Christmas redistribution. This is also, of course, the season when one sets about reviewing the best and worst experiences of the year. Professionally speaking, the direst was a meal I endured with the family just after Easter at the Gosling Bridge Inn, in Carlisle.
It would be masochistic to dwell on the details: let's just say that the £25 it cost us would have been better spent on pot
noodles and a kettleful of boiled water in our hotel room. I don't remember food as bad in all my years of travelling in Eastern Europe before 1989, or in poverty-stricken Cuba, or in Tunisia, Turkey or Greece; only in dismal roadside eateries in America is it matched for fallibility of conception, mediocrity of raw ingredients, cooking ineptitude, abysmal presentation and tardy service. (The service in America is always better, even if the food is as bad.) I was reminded of this meal while looking through the recently published An Appetite for Ale by food and drink writer Fiona Beckett and her pub-owning son, Will Beckett (Campaign for Real Ale, £19.99). Force of
contrast, I hasten to add.
I love cooking, so my approach to recipe books is to ignore the photographs entirely (having worked in this branch of publishing, I remember the ruses to which food photographers are prone) and go straight to the recipes themselves. Those given by Beckett mère et fils are never difficult, complicated or impractical. The book is intended to provide home cooks with a repertoire that would partner beer well; indeed, many of the recipes involve beer. None of them, though, would be over-challenging to create in the pub context; several appear to be taken from the menu at Will Beckett's Islington pub, the Marquess Tavern. This is good, honest food, updated, re-imagined and sometimes perfected. Perhaps I'll send a copy north to Carlisle.
I can understand what a conundrum food service poses for some hosts. Gastropubs are all very well in Islington, where those piling through the doors on a Friday night are able to afford the inevitable expense of good-quality ingredients, and where salads of wild rocket dressed in walnut oil are appreciated rather than jeered by customers.
Wholesome solutions
In most pubs, though, expense is a major factor; family dining and children's meals represent an important section of the
clientèle, and even adult tastes are
profoundly unadventurous. Too often, the wholesale foodservice delivery lorry, the microwave and a dodgy bloke in checked trousers seem to be the easiest solutions. Easy they may be, but rarely the best.
The end of the year is a time for looking forward, too. There aren't many certainties in the pub world, but one of them is that the service of food will be a more important part of the pub offer in 2008 than in 2007, and it will be more important in 2009 than in 2008.
For many pubs, indeed, it's scarcely an exaggeration to say that food is the future. The pressure on customers to drink less is already strong, and will grow; and most of those who want to drink cheaply, drink without driving, or drink and smoke without putting on their coats are going to stay at home.
Attracting customers into pubs increasingly means providing the chance for them to eat good, affordable food in pleasant surroundings - and not to have to face the washing-up afterwards. Even if everyone has a soft drink.
Good, honest food updated and re-imagined should not be beyond the reach of any UK pub kitchen. There are plenty of ways of making it easier - having a shorter menu, for example, and ensuring a
useful proportion of meal options that don't need cooking, or where the cooking is substantially completed in advance of service.
Don't become fixated with the idea of "a meal or nothing"- plenty of customers are happy to graze or eat lighter meals as well as heavier ones. I can never understand the convention dictating that sandwiches are only available at lunchtime. In principle, anything good to eat should be available at any time - especially if it is easy for the staff to prepare. If in doubt, talk to your customers: let them write the menu.
Enormous potential
Let me finish with a wish for the year to come: that the standard of food service in managed houses would undergo a revolution in 2008. I don't suppose that will happen: head office still wants to print menu cards for the entire estate, do all the buying centrally, get the accountants to price everything, and remove any spark of creativity or autonomy from the kitchen staff.
Yet nothing, nationally speaking, lowers the standard of pub food more than the dreariness, tedium and mediocrity of the food offer in chains such as Wetherspoon's.
I appreciate that the sales figures may not underline this fact for management - those managed houses are often in a town's prime sites, where the sheer pressure of footfall means that miserable quality won't receive the punishment it deserves. In Wetherspoon's case, cheapness is regarded as a virtue by many customers, irrespective of tedium. Yet it doesn't have to be so.
Wherever there is a kitchen, a knife, a
saucepan and an oven, the potential for good, fresh food exists. Good, fresh food really can be simplicity itself; and simplicity doesn't have to cost much. Ask the Becketts. Or read their book.