In the early ’90s, as Great Britain was slowly hauling itself out of the culinary dark ages, Mike Belben and David Eyre opened the Eagle in Farringdon. A boozer with a frying pan and some raw ingredients. Ground-breaking it was. Although pubs existed with food, they were more boozers without a frying pan and a freezer full of meals.
The Eagle was described as a gastropub, but let us not forget that gastro is an abbreviation of gastronomic, and pub is an abbreviation of public house.
In 2001, a decade later, the Stagg Inn in Titley, Herefordshire, was awarded a Michelin star. It was a huge ground-breaking event that opened the narrow floodgates to others, and now there are pubs up and down the country with Michelin stars.
Ten years later still, the Hand & Flowers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, was the first to be awarded two Michelin stars and is now up there with the world culinary heavyweights. Ground-shaking I would say.
So what is the future of food in pubs? Food-driven pubs seem to have gone from strength to strength. Yet the Good Food Guide controversially banned the gastropub label from its publication last year.
I love the idea of the word, but it has become so mainstream. It’s time to redefine.
In restaurants there are cafés, bistros, brasseries and fine dining, but, sadly, all we have is pubs. Gastropubs don’t seem to be taken seriously anymore.
Shopping for my friend’s meal last week in a supermarket I passed a range of ready meals labelled ‘Gastropub’. Really, which bit? It looked to me more pub grub than anything else, maybe it was because they were duck sausages.
Chains of pubs now brand themselves as gastropubs, that coupled with the name-checked range of microwave meals and the ubiquity of the phrase, really seem to have devalued the label. Where next for the truly gastro? And who will be brave enough to invent a new genre?
Answers on the back of a postcard, please.
- Jesse Dunford Wood is owner and chef of the Mall Tavern, Notting Hill Gate, London