Categories
20th Century Pub beer and food pubs

The ongoing demise of pub grub

“Can you recommend a pub near Bristol Temple Meads with good food?” Err, actually, we’re not sure we can – 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 chapter about gastropubs, a chunk of which is also available as a blog post.

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

But no sooner was 20th Century Pub published than we began to notice a change in the market.

Back in 2022 we wrote about the declining quality and increasing price of pub food:

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… Wetherspoon pubs, with their vast menus and low prices, further normalised the expectation that a pub would have food available if you wanted it… We’d 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.

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.

Now, in 2025, if we think of our favourite Bristol pubs, hardly any of them serve food, and when they do it’s not ‘pub grub’ but pizzas, burgers, dumplings, noodles…

You might think, great! Those things are all better than microwaved lasagna and Brake’s Brothers steak and ale pie.

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.

That’s exactly the menu our acquaintance was after when they asked for a recommendation the other night.

Like many people not obsessed with pubs and the pub trade, they hadn’t noticed the change, and just assumed pub grub would still be there when they needed it.

It’s interesting how often we find ourselves in pubs that no longer serve food and hear people ask at the bar: “Is the kitchen open?” They haven’t updated their mental model from before the pandemic.

Trying to answer the question we’d been asked, we debated The Barley Mow a bit – it does have food, but when is it served? We couldn’t find this out online and nobody wanted to phone to ask.

In the end, we suggested a 10-minute walk into town where The Old Fish Market, a rather corporate Fuller’s pub, is still selling the 1990s gastropub dream.

Our correspondent was very happy with apparently excellent crispy pork belly and roasted vegetables.

That’s it, we suppose – pub grub has become the preserve of chains who can still squeeze profit out of it through centralised supply chains and carefully costed menus.

This is perhaps also why the Fuller’s and Young’s pound chains did so well over the Christmas period: they provide food when people most want it.

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.

That includes at The Kings Head, one of our favourite Bristol pubs, whose beer offer skews hip and crafty.

Snacks like that might not satisfy those in search of a hearty three-course meal but they’re certainly welcome when, otherwise, you’d have to abandon a cosy spot, and ale on good form, to find something to eat.

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 18 January 2025: The Fifth Element

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the preceding 7 days. This time we’ve got Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, and double Poland.

First, some interesting numbers from pub company Fuller’s for trade in December and January, via Darren Norbury at Beer Today

Like-for-like sales at pub company Fuller’s for the 41 weeks to 11th January were up 5.9%… These figures include excellent trading over the important five-week Christmas and New Year period, said the company. This delivered like-for-like sales growth of 10.2%.

What does this tell us? That corporate chain venues are perhaps outperforming independents, perhaps. And why might that be? Based on the Fuller’s pub here in Bristol, it’s certainly not because they’re cheap. Maybe because of reliability, familiarity, space and scale.


Roosters Yankee

Pellicle editor Matthew Curtis has given himself space to write about Rooster Brewery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire – a fascinating case study in succession and longevity:

If Roosters was built on the back of Sean Franklin’s legacy, then it was Baby Faced Assassin that ushered in the beginning of the Fozard era. When it comes to that legacy there’s a definite sense of stewardship, which is why you’ll always find Yankee on the hand pulls in the taproom, and on the bar at pubs across Yorkshire… But there’s also a sense that – in terms of identity – it’s something of a burden, perhaps aggravated by [Tom Fozard’s] inherently creative instincts and desire to do things his own way. Roosters was never going to be a blank canvas for the Fozards, but Baby Faced Assassin, at least, gave them a fresh set of paintbrushes with which to depict the brewery’s influence on beer and brewing in the United Kingdom.

(Also, Matt’s written sources for this article are excellent. Ahem.)


The exterior of a micropub converted from a retail unit on a British high street.
SOURCE: Scott Spencer/Micropub Adventures.

Scott Spencer has been exploring Peterborough, a city that we’ve never visited, for Micropub Adventures:

The Bumble Inn… is recognized as Peterborough’s first micropub, opening up in June 2016 after transforming from an old chemist shop. The place was brought to life by Tom Beran and his wife, Michelle. Before diving into the micropub scene, Tom spent a decade running the Coalheavers Arms Pub in Peterborough. His goal with The Bumble Inn was to create a unique experience, prioritizing quality over quantity and offering a rotating selection of beers from both local and national breweries… Tom gave me an awesome warm welcome, and it was really nice chatting with him and a few regulars…


A bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra next to a conical glass with a Guinness logo. The glass is full of dark beer.
SOURCE: Liam K/IrishBeerHistory.

Liam K has posted a new entry in his ‘100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects’ series at IrishBeerHistory. This time, it’s a glass that illuminates the export trade from Dublin to Belgium:

This glass is a wonderful piece of workmanship that no photo will do justice to. It is made from quality glass that approaches lead crystal in colour, quality and sound, and appears to be mould-blown or similarly formed before the eight facets were cut and polished by hand to form an octagonal-shaped lower section around an extra thick base, with the bottom of the glass also polished to an incredible smoothness. As to the more boring details, the tumbler is approximately 15cm high by 8.5cm wide at its mouth, it weighs 400grms and holds 400ml of liquid… this volume is a perfect fit for a 330ml bottle of Guinness including room for a head right up to the rim without overflowing, which is helped by the conical shape. The name and product that comes to mind in the 1950s with regard to Guinness on the continent, and Belgium in particular is John Martin in Antwerp, and bottles of Guinness Foreign Export Stout.


Baltic porter beer bottle cap: Pardubicky Porter.

At Beervana Jeff Alworth provides some insight into the history of Baltic porter, the specific variant found in Poland, and its continuing popularity in that country:

In 2019, I traveled to Poland for the first time. I was excited to try grodziskie and get a handle on one of the old, but underrated European brewing countries. What I discovered was that grodziskie was a really obscure style, made by just a few breweries… Baltic porter, on the other hand? It’s not as popular as domestic pale lagers (which are sadly tasteless little wan beers in Poland), but it is definitely a major and successful style. Large industrial breweries still make it, but so do many of the little breweries that have popped up over the last decade and a half. I remember stepping into a beer store in Kraków with scores of beers from local breweries, and a lot of them were Baltic porters.


A detail from a letter written in ornate cursive script. The language is Polish.
SOURCE: Andreas Krennmair/Polish national archives.

Staying in Poland, Andreas Krennmair has continued his exploration of archive material around Europe by digging into material held in the national archives in Kraków:

[A] big reason for me to visit was to find out more about the historic Goldfinger brewery in Kraków. I previously did a little bit of research into Markus Goldfinger through online archives, mostly the Austrian newspaper archives…There wasn’t much I could find about Goldfinger in the first place, and of two bundles of documents that I ordered, only one was made available to me. What I did get to view was a big bunch of correspondence between members of the Goldfinger family and the magistrate (think of it as the municipal office), most of them stamped with Austrian revenue stamps of 50 Kreuzer each (value nowadays would be roughly €8.50)… There was one letter that caught my eye, though…


Finally, from BlueSky, a post which, for some reason, Steve didn’t think would make this slot…

Fuck yes!

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— CarsmileSteve (@carsmilesteve.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 8:33 PM

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.

Categories
bristol pubs

Punks, pool and arty postcards – crawling the pubs of Easton

We spent Saturday night exploring the pubs of Easton in Bristol, revisiting some we’ve not been to for a while, and one completely new to us.

Easton is a couple of neighbourhoods across from ours. It’s got a reputation for alternative culture – anarchists, punks, hippies and graffiti.

But, like most places in Bristol, it’s been gentrifying rapidly and its many small terraced houses are increasingly likely to be painted grey with window boxes full of herbs, and bike sheds in the front yards.

The first pub on our crawl was The Whitehall Tavern which has taken us almost eight years to get around to visiting, making it our 311th Bristol pub.

Why the delay? Well, because from the outside it doesn’t look anything special, or especially inviting.

The moment we walked through the door, however, we realised we’d read the signals wrong. It was busy, warm, and lively. The crowd varied from twentysomething to 70+, from work boots to student scarves, from chess players to pool players, from tattooed cider punks to rockabilly hipsters.

It felt like a pub balanced on the sweet spot between traditional and gentrified, where incomers to the neighbourhood had been made welcome but not allowed to dominate.

It took a while to get served because there was only one person behind the bar.

“Got any help coming?” someone shouted.

“From 6pm,” he shouted back, running past with a fiver in one hand and a pint of cider in the other.

He was one of those professionals who was a pleasure to watch. He always knew who was next to be served and the regulars only had to raise a finger for their usual pint to be delivered.

When our turn finally came we ordered two pints of Butcombe Original. He pulled them two thirds of the way and left the foam to settle while he served two or three other people at lightning speed. Then he topped off our drinks and said:

“Six pounds, please.”

Did he say six pounds? For two pints? We didn’t really believe it until we saw the amount on the screen of the card machine.

The beer was excellent, too – cool, fresh, and presented in a perfectly clean branded glass.

From our corner by the dartboard we watched strangers play pool, listened to middle-aged men debate the football, and observed a conversation that seemed to be simmering up to an argument.

“Dad would have loved this,” said Ray. “Especially the price of the beer.”

Frightfully nice

Our next destination, by way of contrast, was The Greenbank, a large corner pub that we would guess was built in around 1900.

The Greenbank is a middle class stronghold – one of those Nice Pubs with small plates, posh burgers, quirky artwork for sale, and artfully mismatched furniture.

“It’s like being in an Antic pub in London in about 2012,” said Jess, not disapprovingly.

Though the pub feels as if it might be in London, and the conversations around us had Home Counties accents, the beer is Bristolian all the way.

A very pleasant barman served us cask Beer Factory Everytime (cask) in a dimpled mug (a key signifier of a posh pub these days) and a half of Wiper & True Espresso Martini coffee stout. This round came to £6.75 – which, by 2025 standards, isn’t bad value either.

Having taken against it on a previous visit – we can’t quite remember why – this made us think we ought to visit more often, if only to eavesdrop on the entertaining conversations of people in mustard-coloured beanie hats.

Samosa intermission

After two rounds we needed a snack and so detoured to Jeevan Sweets on Stapleton Road, where a sign prohibits the consumption of alcohol or tobacco.

We ordered two samosas (£1 each) and a single piece of mango barfi (75p) and ate them as we wandered towards our next pub.

“I had my first samosa when I was six,” said Jess with her mouth full. “It changed my life.”

“The first time I came to stay with you in London you couldn’t wait to buy me a samosa from Pete’s Fish Bar.”

The samosa is superior boozing food. Starchy, crunchy, and only mildly spicy, it lines the stomach without knackering the palate. Pubs should sell them as a matter of course.

The interior of a bare, fairly basic pub with white walls.
The Sugar Loaf

A classic big light pub

Last time we went to The Sugar Loaf it was struggling and felt more like a youth club than a pub.

We weren’t surprised when it closed for a while and have been following the story of its resurrection under new management for a while.

Again, first impressions were good. It felt brighter, cleaner and more friendly, while retaining a down-to-earth East Bristol atmosphere.

We both ordered Timothy Taylor Landlord which, along with Wye Valley Butty Bach, is a permanent part of the offer. It was excellent, making three great pints of cask ale in a row, in pubs that we haven’t particularly noticed cask heads enthusing about.

A couple of years ago Steve ‘Carsmile’ Hewitt used the phrase ‘big light pub’ to describe the typical Sheffield boozer. It could definitely apply to The Sugar Loaf, too, where there aren’t many shadows to hide in.

We listened to a conversation in Spanish from one side and the click of pool balls from the other. Every now and then we’d catch a whiff of weed from somebody passing by. Three skateboarders wandered in, wandered round, and wandered out.

“If the Whitehall is more your kind of pub,” said Jess, “and this is more mine.” (Context.)

Punk’s not dead

Finally, with some trepidation, we made our way to The Chelsea Inn. Not because it’s a particularly scary pub but because when we last visited we got the distinct feeling we were too square to be there.

It’s not all about us or how comfortable we feel, after all, but how comfortable other people might feel with us standing there in the corner looking like a pair of geography teachers, or council inspectors.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived at the door was a sign saying that, while dogs are welcome, they have to be out by 7pm because after that time the pub just becomes too loud for them.

We walked in to find half the space given over to a drum kit and various amplifiers. Around the bar were crowded people in leather jackets, denim, and army surplus. There were studs, chains, piercings and tattoos everywhere. Most of the hair was white, grey, pink or purple.

There was also a small child in ear defenders running around in their pyjamas in a state of extreme excitement. They were high-fived by the regulars, hoisted in the air by a barman, and generally treated like royalty.

We were delighted to see that the cask ale on offer was from Ashley Down Brewery, a tiny outfit run by Vince Crocker, former co-landlord of The Drapers Arms.

He’s a slightly reclusive figure, Vince, better at brewing than schmoozing, but he seems to have a fond status as the Gandalf of Bristol brewing.

As a result, his beer turns up in all sorts of unexpected places, with its handmade wooden pump clips bearing the slogan “Nice with crisps.”

This particular beer, Red Stoat, was rather marvellous: as round and rich as Fuller’s ESB but with more pine and spice.

For those counting, that’s four great pints of cask in four pubs on a single evening – full house!

While the band finished setting up, the child in pyjamas had a go on the drum kit, with the encouragement of the crowd. They weren’t half bad, either.

We slipped out just as the music began in earnest, leaving the punks to their anarchy.

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 11 January 2025: The Cat Creeps

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time we’ve got thistle glasses, more Kölsch, and an accidental cult beer.

For a generation of British craft beer drinkers, this news carries some emotional resonance: Magic Rock Brewing is appointing administrators.

It’s a brewery you could use to tell the whole story of the UK craft beer boom: family money, a talented brewer; launching at just the right time to attract a new breed of beer drinker; then, a buy-out by big beer, followed by divestment once the brand had lost a decade’s goodwill.

Breweries come and go. They rise and fall. You’re allowed to feel sad but, in this case, the magic really went a long time ago. For us, it will certainly make re-reading our book Brew Britannia bittersweet.


Koelsch barrels on a serving counter in a Cologne beer hall.

Katie Mather has dropped part 2 of her report on a trip to Cologne and it’s as joyful, and envy-inducing, as the first part:

Brauhaus Päffgen is such a great place that I just got emotional thinking about it. An historic brewery beloved by hardcore Kölsch nerds, of course the beer is good, but the place itself is perfection. We sat on a wooden bench and ate delicious pumpkin soup, bread, cheese and mustard, and Tom ordered a single gherkin jsut because it was on the menu. The wooden-beamed dining hall was welcoming and haunted at the same time, flanked by windowed partitions and a “confessional” — the strange but efficient booth where the maitre d’/Oberkellner took telephone bookings on a rotary phone, controlled the lighting from a central switchboard, and thrust tickets and receipts onto a steel spike at the side of her desk.


An illustration of a glass of stout in front of a burial mound.
SOURCE: Pellicle/Mark Hill.

An article by Eoghan Walsh, one of our favourite writers, at Pellicle, one of our favourite publications? That went into the bookmarks folder for this round up before we’d even read it. It’s about a cult Irish beer, O’Hara’s Leann Folláin extra Irish stout, and the circumstances that led to its creation:

2008 was an important year for Seamus and the Carlow Brewing Company. It was 12 years since he’d co-founded the brewery with his brother, and 10 since they’d started selling beer from an old goods shed beside Carlow town train station. They’d had a solid decade of export-led growth, and with local interest finally starting to catch up, O’Hara was eyeing up a move to a larger site in nearby Bagenalstown… It was, Seamus says, an “inflection point”—for them and for Irish brewing too. O’Hara’s, together with Porterhouse and Dublin Brewing Company, had all launched in the mid 1990s into what Seamus describes as a “one-dimensional” Irish beer market lacking in adventurous or creative beers. In the mid-2000s they were joined by a new generation of breweries prompted by changes to excise rules that favoured small producers, and Irish drinkers were becoming (a little) more adventurous.


A thistle-shaped glass with a bulbous bottom and fluted top.
SOURCE: Finest Beer Shop/Martin Brewers.

One of Kevin Kain’s special areas of interest is glassware – something that doesn’t often attract forensic attention. This time he’s been asking when and why the ‘thistle glass’ came to associated with Scottish beer, at least from a US perspective:

The popularity led an English importer in Antwerp to create his own brand for the Belgian market. This brand, Gordon’s Highland Scotch Ale, was originally brewed by George Younger & Son in Alloa, Scotland (after changing hands many times, it is now actually brewed in Belgium). Their branded thistle glasses go hand in hand with the beer, now sold as Gordon Scotch Ale. They also often have a special Christmas edition thistle glass for their Xmas beer… So where did we get the notion that the thistle glass was somehow an important part of Scottish beer culture? The Gordon glass may have played a role. However, the 1993 book, Scotch Ale, by Greg Noonan likely had a significant impact, at least in the United States. The cover prominently features a beer in a thistle glass.


A can of BrewDog Wingman IPA with a bird wearing a pilot's helmet.
SOURCE: BrewDog.

In a post reviewing BrewDog’s Wingman Session IPA The Beer Nut says a lot in a 300 words, and much that we agree with:

BrewDog does still be Brewdogging. Whenever the discourse turns in their direction, there’s always someone saying “yer, and thur beer is shit now too,” but in my experience it’s not, and never has been (unless you got one of those Punk cans). This beer is fine, leaning to good, but most importantly is what it’s meant to be. I have no objection to it being on the market and can see it being the best available option in any number of circumstances. Now there’s a slogan for them.


A large country pub surrounded by snowy hills.
SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons/Geograph/Matthew Hatton, under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This piece by Robyn Vinter about being snowed in at The Tan Hill Inn is a great read, including the fascinating detail that some people head there hoping for an extended stopover:

On Saturday night at the Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub, the snow is falling and the crowd of about 30 people inside know they are probably stuck here for a couple of days. Throughout the place, at the northern edge of North Yorkshire, drinks are flowing and friends are being made… Weather warnings for snow are in place across much of the UK, and the Met Office has advised the public to only make necessary journeys, with road closures, train and flight cancellations, and rural communities becoming cut off… That is something the staff at the Tan Hill Inn, which is 528 metres (1,732ft) above sea level, are used to. The pub has a history of what people call “snow-ins” – in 2021, 61 punters who had come to watch an Oasis tribute band were trapped for three days.


Finally, from BlueSky, a very desirable drinking vessel…

It's not incredibly rare, but I picked up this nice ceramic tankard recently. Made by Coceram (like Orval, a Belgian company) and I'm not sure of the date – 60s-80s maybe? I love the shape and especially the handle, and curiously, it holds exactly one imperial pint! …

[image or embed]

— IrishBeerHistory (@beerfoodtravel.bsky.social) January 8, 2025 at 7:57 PM

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.

Categories
pubs

Stats on our Bristol pub visits in 2024

We’ve continued to log our Bristol pub visits and as we tick over into a new year it’s a good time to share some stats and further thoughts.

We also wrote a version of this post last year and similar caveats apply:

  • Our spreadsheet only captures visits to Bristol pubs, not pubs anywhere else.
  • We continued to neglect logging of tap rooms.
  • We only count joint visits to pubs; several pubs would be higher on this list if we counted solo visits.

It’s also worth saying that it’s entirely possible we’ve missed some visits, particularly to our regular haunts which we might take for granted.

When we’re out for a crawl we usually remember to log them but when we’re popping in on the way home, maybe not.

However, as with last year, we’re happy that the numbers reflect the overall pattern of our visits. And anyway, we’re not the Office for National Statistics.

The big numbers

In total during 2024 we logged 111 pub visits in Bristol, across 50 different pubs.

This compares to 125 visits across 54 pubs last year. 

Also down this year was the number of new Bristol pubs visited for our ‘Every Pub in Bristol’ mission. We only managed 10 in 2024.

Perhaps it’s natural to expect that this number will keep diminishing as those that are left to tick are further out and harder to get to.

It’s also been a tough year personally so we’ve favoured a certain amount of familiarity, and had less time for expeditions

The pubs we visited most

Like last year The Barley Mow, The Swan with Two Necks and The King’s Head were our most visited pubs, making up 39 visits between them.

That compares to 29 last year, backing up the point above about seeking familiarity.

They’re also all a handy 20-25 minutes walk from our house.

We were both surprised to see The Barley Mow had pipped The Swan this time round, though, because we’re fonder of The Swan these days.

We think that reflects The Barley’s Mow’s convenient location on the way home from the central train station, and from the centre of town. The Swan usually takes us a little out of our way.

Our next biggest hitters are also localish.

We visited the newly reopened Crown Tavern 5 times and suspect it might be more next year, especially given its enticing Bass Club, and its proximity to The Swan.

We shouted out The Langton in our top 5 Bristol pints post at the start of last year and it continues to be a friendly local serving a wide range of customers and tastes.

Then after that, there’s nowhere we’ve visited more than three times, including a lot of our supposed favourites.

This is partly because we have been trying to spread the love a little, and revisit some pubs that have changed hands or changed their offer.

Particularly happy rediscoveries this year were The Nova Scotia, The Bridge Inn and The Duke of York, all of which made our updated 2025 Bristol Pub Guide.

How we did on our resolutions

We managed to visit all the pubs listed in our 2024 Bristol pub guide and all those that we were considering for inclusion in 2025.

However, we failed to log taprooms consistently, which means that we’re missing probably 30-40 drinking sessions from this list, as we do go to Lost and Grounded most Friday evenings.

And as for Every Pub In Bristol, well, perhaps we’ll be realistic and stop saying that we’re going to finish the full set this year..

Instead, we’ll just aim to visit more new Bristol pubs in 2025 than we did in 2024. If we manage 11, taking us to 321 in total, with about 25 to go, that’ll be a win.