The Pubs with No Beer

13Nov07

The maid’s gone all cranky and the cook’s acting queer
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer

- A Pub With No Beer. Written by Gordon Parsons and recorded by Slim Dusty

Slim probably never spent much time in a Gastro Pub, but I reckon he might have felt a bit awkward singing at one of the Crooked Billet’s music nights. Not that the Billet’s completely dry. It has one hell of a wine list. Quite a few good single malts too. And I suppose it does have two beers on tap: Brakspear’s Bitter and Guinness when I was there recently.

But there’s nothin’ so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer

That’s the problem. No bar.

Don’t get me wrong: The Crooked Billet’s a fantastic place to go for a bite to eat, maybe a glass of wine with some olives and pita on a summer evening. But a pub it is not. Surely a pub’s got to have a bar? And more than one real ale in a country that has so many good ones?

Never mind that the term “Gastro Pub” is so bloody awful. No problem with a pub that serves good food. But it should have a bar. And a selection of good beer.

Of course there are a huge bunch of so-called Gastro Pubs around now. Some of them have good food. Most of them aren’t pubs. Two that get it right in these parts are The Lamb and The Bull – good pub, good beer, good basic food. Ramsay’s got a decent pub (but c’mon mate – get yourself some proper glasses if you’re serving Belgian beer. Leffe Blonde from a pint glass FFS?) with an attached restaurant, but you’re still eating in a restaurant, not a pub (good food though – the Neeps mash sure had us by the short and curlies).

But most of these places are fucking awful. That’s the flip-side of the great English food revolution of the last 15 years: Now everyone thinks they can be the next Jamie Oliver. Face it: the average English pub cook hasn’t got the teeth to be a TV celeb chef, let alone the culinary skill. Asking them to cook you Gastro fare is like asking an American to shut up or an Australian to sober up – you end up feeling like you’ve been punched in the guts 50 times.

It’s enough to give you gastro.

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