When it comes to sauciness, the Poms leave everyone else in the dust with a dry taste in their mouth. And I’m not just talking about the over-proportioned English lasses found on page 3 of The Sun. Nope – the creme de la creme of English sauciness comes from – where else – the English kitchen. No ladies, I’m not talking about Jamie Oliver either. I’m talking about good old fashioned, stick to yer ribs English gravy type sauce, which it seems it’s pretty much impossible to avoid. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible to get less than a gallon of the stuff whenever you eat over here.

Take the pork dish that a friend of mine ordered at The Bull the other night. The Bull’s a pub in Sonning that does pretty good up-market pub food, and the dish in question was tender pieces of pork in a roquefort cream sauce – pretty nice. But why the chef felt the need to demonstrate that pork doesn’t float in a vat of roquefort cream sauce is anyone’s guess. The thing is, you can’t escape the sauce in England. The pasta we had a few weeks ago tasted fine, but there was so much sauce dumped on top that you wondered why they even bothered with the pasta – just serve the sauce in a bowl and give me a spoon! It continues into dessert too – a recent example we eventually determined to be an apple crumble, once we’d dredged to the bottom of the bowl of custard. Any crumble that once existed had turned into, well, sauce thickener by the time we got to it.

Tonight I popped down to the local Waitrose to get some ready made Indian food. I felt like eating chicken tikka – marinated pieces of grilled chicken. But of course all I could find was chicken tikka fucking masala – chicken tikka drowned in a bloody sauce. Same thing around the corner in M&S. What’s the bloody problem with Chicken Tikka the way it’s meant to be served – dry? Do the English have a problem with their saliva glands? Maybe it’s a service to all the poms with dodgy teeth. Here’s what British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook had to say about it:

“Chicken Tikka Massala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken Tikka is an Indian dish. The Massala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.”

Perfect bloody illustration of how Britain, not satisfied with it’s own woeful kitchen, even manages to fuck up good foreign food if you ask me. English Sauce? I wish they’d banish it to page 3.

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.