If it were possible to offer counselling to buildings there would be a mint to be made from the pub business. So many of them are screwed up these days, it's a wonder they're not all on happy pills. Time was, pubs knew what they were: places where people went for a pint, a packet of crisps and a lousy cheese ploughman's. Then the breweries flogged off thousands of their tied houses and new owners decided these old pubs had to learn new tricks. Some have become boozers with a little food on the side.
Some have become restaurants pretending to be pubs. Some have tried to be both, with little success. Is it a pubsteraunt? Is it a restaub?
The Sun Inn at Dedham in Essex, a fine, old pub of butter-yellow walls outside, and beams and flagstones and saggy sofas in, knows what it is. It does not need counselling. Yes, it serves food, but it is fully in touch with its inner pub. Just look at this note on the wine list from owner Piers Baker: 'There is more expensive Bordeaux out there but I don't think you would want to drink it, at least not here.' Expensive bottles of Bordeaux are not what the Sun Inn is about. It could never take itself that seriously. And so the wine list, while bending the knee at all the stations of the cross - Sancerre and Chablis, Chianti and Rioja - starts at a tenner and has nothing (bar champagne) over £30. It's a quaffing list with 15 choices by the glass, the kind of list you want to see offered at a bar alongside Adnams, Guinness and Stowford Press Cider on tap.
It's also the kind of stuff you would want to drink alongside food like this. You could, if you could be fagged, describe it by the origins of the ingredients. In which case it would, I suppose, be modern British with strong Mediterranean influences. There's roast fillet of Cornish cod with salsa verde, crushed new potatoes and chorizo. There's chicken with purple sprouting broccoli with chilli, garlic and cream. There's Tuscan sausages or rib-eye steak or fried lamb's liver, all for between £10 and £12.
More instructive, though, would be to describe it by how it appears on the plate: this is rustic food that recalls more the farmhouse than the restaurant kitchen. It's the kind of food you want to find in your local pub. So a starter portion of mussel risotto, rich with saffron and white wine at £4.50, is a generous plateful. Their tapas plate, meant for two to share as a starter, is equally rough and ready. There are some thick discs of crisply fried black pudding mixed with slices of caramelised apple. There are tender strips of grilled beef, in a rich, honeyed sauce, and a light frittata of green peppers. Only the toasted country bread, smeared with a coarse mixture of cod and aioli doesn't score, for being under-seasoned.
No, not exactly tapas, but then if you make no great claims for the guiding principles behind your food then you don't have to worry about keeping to a script. There is no script. Pudding stays closer to home with crumbles and cakes and cheese. And this is only the menu for the lunch I was there, because it changes every day. How refreshing. Piers Baker, who ran a number of gastropubs in London before coming here, has in the Sun, created a non-concept concept. And it works.
· The Sun Inn, High Street, Dedham, Essex (01206 323351). Meal for two, including wine and service, £60
