The name and shame game
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
What you read on the Pig is, to the best of my knowledge, an up-to-date, honest appraisal of the featured destinations (and if you have information to the contrary, we want to know). But a certain pub on the Wells Road (A39) near Hallatrow is most certainly not living up to its own website blurb. There might well be an original Great Western Railway train carriage in the beer garden (please note, I used the word ‘might’; this statement is not intended to be an identifiable landmark) and the owners might (see previous qualifier) claim to be serving ‘award winning food, locally sourced, homemade food’. But on the day I visited in search of a countryside ‘hidden gem’ to share with fellow scoffers, I discovered that what I expected to be an historic, eclectic, ‘traditional’ roadside inn was nothing more than a cluttered, dingy, oppressive boozer serving food to match, mostly consisting of deep-fried everything served with chips or floppy lettuce leaves (and mayonnaise in those tacky, miniscule plastic sachets). If trains still stopped at Hallatrow I’d have taken the next one back to civilisation as soon as the microwave pinged; as it was, I was outta there before you could sing the opening bars of the ‘Deliverance’ theme tune. This pub needs to either scrub up or update their website – after all, the Pig does both on a regular basis.
And sadly, I came across several similarly sad examples of Great British pub on my travels. For every glorious gastropub (whether they’re consciously setting out to achieve such a status or not) set in picture-postcard surroundings there are at least three perpetuating the non-illustrious reputation of British pubs. “Can we order food to eat in the garden?”. “No – there might be wasps”. “Can we order a sandwich?”. “Only if you have a starter or a dessert as well”. “A glass of Sauvignon Blanc, please”. “It hasn’t been in the fridge – is that okay?”. Fawlty Towers? You got it! Then there’s those darn ‘locally sourced’/’seasonal’ claims, printed in ‘classy’ font at the start of menus that go on to take you through a whistlestop tour of chicken nuggets, deep-fried camembert and the vile, omnipresent ‘Death by Chocolate’.
If the UK really does embark on a food revolution, locals with feeling could do a lot worse than turning their village pub into a local HQ. Meanwhile, look for country pubs that do indeed live up to their promises on the Pig soon.
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