Do not judge the Good Pub Guide (GPG) too harshly: it needs to sell books in a tough market. You may call the confected controversy that accompanied the release of the travel guide’s 37th edition trolling. The GPG would call it PR.
Effective PR, too, given that its headline claim – that pub-goers are suffering a pandemic of pretentious “MasterChef-mad” food – was widely reported. So excitedly reported, in fact, that people such as me (a food writer who cares about pubs, grub and the truth) may feel compelled to set the record straight, despite this offering yet more publicity for the GPG.
Its main claim is that its baffled readership have had enough of: “Eating kabsa, katsuobushi, matbucha, succotash, tataki or verjus in a pub. We don’t want our dishes adorned with carrot fluff, edible sand or fish ‘foam’. Leave that to swanky restaurants.”
The Little Englander tone is depressing. The average British regular may not want to eat Saudi Arabian rice dishes (kabsa) or dried fermented tuna (katsuobushi), but curry nights are a pub staple nationwide and a significant minority of UK pubs contain Thai and Chinese restaurants. Are pub-goers more adventurous than the average GPG correspondent? Possibly.
Moreover, this pearl-clutching idea that British pubs are overrun with “wacky” food is cobblers. A quick Google of “edible sand” brings up an old menu at Scawton’s Hare Inn, but scant other pub references. The Hare is a tasting-menus-only venue. A restaurant. No one would mistake it for a local boozer. The “carrot fluff” I can only trace to the New Forest’s Three Tuns Inn, a pub of otherwise solidly (burger, fish and chips, steak and kidney pie) mainstream credentials. That carrot fluff is just that. Fluff. A linguistic flourish.
None of this constitutes an epidemic of impenetrable food, as you will know if you have ever been to a pub – or ever left the house. This British high street is not really the GPG’s territory (its realm is more polished, Farrow & Ball-hued rural inns), but it is worth remembering that the vast majority of UK chain pubs serve ultra-predictable menus of bought-in, quick-assembly, microwaveable food at super-low prices. No fish foam. No tataki. Plenty of 2-for-1 steak nights.
But even in the rarefied realms of the (cough!) gastropub, where restaurant-quality food is the aim, the GPG’s claim bears little scrutiny. Nationally, the number of genuinely cutting-edge foodie destinations located in old pubs (for instance, West Yorkshire’s Moorcock Inn or the Michelin-starred Sportsman in Kent), is vanishingly small. And good luck to them. When 18 pubs are closing each week, this is a great way to repurpose those buildings.
More broadly, even pubs with la-di-da chefs at the helm are keen to be democratic these days. You can spend big at Cumbria’s Pentonbridge Inn (run by ex-oppos of Marcus Wareing) or Essex’s Flitch of Bacon (a spin-off from the two-Michelin-star Midsummer House), but you can also sit in the bar and eat a gussied-up steak sandwich, fish cakes, suet pudding or ham hock on toast. This year, having lost its Michelin star, Devon’s Treby Arms ditched its tasting menus. It now serves casual Italian food. That is the direction of travel.
In its plea for “honest pub grub” (a problematic concept), the GPG hymns its value pub of the year, the Old Castle in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, for its hearty homemade classics such as fish pie. It sounds great. But is it part of a dying breed? No. From London’s Marksman to Cumbria’s Punch Bowl Inn via Chester’s Brewery Tap, the majority of pubs seeking to serve good food are – from plates of wood pigeon, liver toast and hedgerow jelly to black pudding, fried egg and bubble’n’squeak – doing so in an identifiably British pub idiom. One that, at its best, also embraces modern methods and global food styles. At Lancashire’s Parker’s Arms, for instance, its lauded pies come with a side order of Lebanese-French influences from its chef, Stosie Madi.
To me, a pub menu in 2018 should contain precisely that hint of excitement. The menu should be as fluid as the pub itself. It should contain enough staples so that it is familiar and affordable (circa £11), but, as at Sedbergh’s Black Bull (beetroot bourguignon and ewe’s curd; venison pastilla), it should tempt you from your comfort zone. You should be able to drop in for a pint and end up on an adventure. In a pub, I can even tolerate that fine dining frippery, an amuse-bouche, if – as at Derbyshire’s Boot Inn – it is delivered with zero pomp. The talented chef, Rob Taylor, also serves an A1 burger.
It is the best of both worlds. Although Taylor’s quail ballotine with bacon jam would blow the Good Pub Guide’s tiny mind.
• Tony Naylor is a journalist who writes about food
