{"id":39554,"date":"2025-01-21T10:24:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T10:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/recipes\/category-a-b\/beer\/the-ongoing-demise-of-pub-grub\/"},"modified":"2025-01-21T10:24:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T10:24:50","slug":"the-ongoing-demise-of-pub-grub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=39554","title":{"rendered":"The ongoing demise of pub grub"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\u201cCan you recommend a pub near Bristol Temple Meads with good food?\u201d Err, actually, we\u2019re not sure we can \u2013 which is quite strange, really.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A decade ago, it felt as if most pubs offered food, and a common grumble was that all pubs had become gastropubs.<\/p>\n

Our 2017 book 20th Century Pub<\/em> has a chapter about gastropubs, a chunk of which is also available as a blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In that piece, researched and written in 2016, we said that the term gastropub had essentially died in 2011 when The Good Food Guide<\/em> stopped using it because it no longer felt like a special category.<\/p>\n

But no sooner was 20th Century Pub <\/em>published than we began to notice a change in the market.<\/p>\n

Back in 2022 we wrote about the declining quality and increasing price<\/a> of pub food:<\/p>\n

\n

The success of the gastropub, both as a business model and as a buzzword, took it into the mainstream. By the late noughties, received wisdom across much of the pub industry was that you needed to offer food to survive and the wet-led pub was on the way out\u2026 Wetherspoon pubs, with their vast menus and low prices, further normalised the expectation that a pub would have food available if you wanted it\u2026 We\u2019d argue this has reversed somewhat in the past decade. Between micropubs and taprooms, new wet-led enterprises have opened in most towns and cities in England, and are often go-to destinations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There were also stories of pubs closing their kitchens, reducing their food offer to simple snacks, reducing the hours of food service, or farming out the work to pop-ups and food trucks.<\/p>\n

Now, in 2025, if we think of our favourite Bristol pubs, hardly any of them serve food, and when they do it\u2019s not \u2018pub grub\u2019<\/a> but pizzas, burgers, dumplings, noodles\u2026<\/p>\n

You might think, great! Those things are all better than microwaved lasagna and Brake\u2019s Brothers steak and ale pie.<\/p>\n

But part of the appeal of pub grub was its simplicity and variety. A party of six could go to the pub and between them eat fish and chips, linguini, a big salad, a burger, a pie, and bangers and mash.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly the menu our acquaintance was after when they asked for a recommendation the other night.<\/p>\n

Like many people not obsessed with pubs and the pub trade, they hadn\u2019t noticed the change, and just assumed pub grub would still be there when they needed it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting how often we find ourselves in pubs that no longer serve food and hear people ask at the bar: \u201cIs the kitchen open?\u201d They haven\u2019t updated their mental model from before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Trying to answer the question we\u2019d been asked, we debated The Barley Mow a bit \u2013 it does have food, but when is it served? We couldn\u2019t find this out online and nobody wanted to phone to ask.<\/p>\n

In the end, we suggested a 10-minute walk into town where The Old Fish Market, a rather corporate Fuller\u2019s pub, is still selling the 1990s gastropub dream.<\/p>\n

Our correspondent was very happy with apparently excellent crispy pork belly and roasted vegetables.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it, we suppose \u2013 pub grub has become the preserve of chains who can still squeeze profit out of it through centralised supply chains and carefully costed menus.<\/p>\n

This is perhaps also why the Fuller\u2019s and Young\u2019s pound chains did so well over the Christmas period: they provide food when people most want it.<\/p>\n

On a more positive note, we have observed a resurgence in the availability of clingfilm-wrapped cheese and onion rolls, pies, pasties and scotch eggs.<\/p>\n

That includes at The Kings Head, one of our favourite Bristol pubs, whose beer offer skews hip and crafty.<\/p>\n

Snacks like that might not satisfy those in search of a hearty three-course meal but they\u2019re certainly welcome when, otherwise, you\u2019d have to abandon a cosy spot, and ale on good form, to find something to eat.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCan you recommend a pub near Bristol Temple Meads with good food?\u201d Err, actually, we\u2019re not sure we can \u2013 which is quite strange, really. A decade ago, it felt as if most pubs offered food, and a common grumble was that all pubs had become gastropubs. Our 2017 book 20th Century Pub has a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[25198,25197,14515,22999,3265],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-39554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beer","tag-demise","tag-gastropubs","tag-grub","tag-ongoing","tag-pub"],"yoast_head":"\nThe ongoing demise of pub grub - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=39554\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The ongoing demise of pub grub - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cCan you recommend a pub near Bristol Temple Meads with good food?\u201d Err, actually, we\u2019re not sure we can \u2013 which is quite strange, really. 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