There are different kinds of restaurants – pub food, cafe food and fine dining food all fall under the restaurant category. You will expect a different standard of cooking and care in each of these kinds of places but let us have a look at pub food. What is the truth behind pub food recipes? Are these dishes usually freshly prepared or will you get something that has been made months before and deep-frozen?
In Britain, pub food is usually known as “pub grub.” In the early twentieth century, this consisted of a cold snack such as a salad or shellfish vendors setting up stalls outside and selling cockles, mussels and whelks.
Most pubs in the 1950s offered “a pie and a pint,” the landlord’s wife being the one to bake the steak and ale pies. In the 1960s, chicken in a basket and scampi in a basket appeared on pub menus. Irish stew with soda bread was the equivalent in Ireland.
How is Modern Pub Food Different?
Pub food currently found in British pubs includes fish and chips, bangers and mash, hot pot, pasties, steak and kidney pie, shepherd’s pie, ploughman’s lunch and Sunday roast. International recipes such as chili con carne, curry, and lasagna are often served too. In Australia, the pub food menu will include bangers and mash, steak, chicken schnitzel, pub-style hamburger and fish, often served with mashed potatoes, chips or wedges and a salad.
Since the 1990s pub food has become a more important part of the pub experience and most public houses, serve lunch and dinner at the table instead of bar snacks at the bar. Some pubs serve top quality food, which can rival that of a good restaurant and the pubs at the far end of this scale call themselves “gastro pubs.” This word is a combination of the words pub and gastronomy and it was coined in 1991 when The Eagle, a pub in London, opened and started serving fine food.
Pub Food versus Homemade Food
Not every pub is like The Eagle though and a lot of pubs nowadays are using the cheapest ingredients they can find. There is a reason why a pub kitchen might have ten microwaves and only four hob rings. Rather than the freshly made meal you might have got fifty years ago, your pub food is likely to consist of something that has been mass made in a food factory, packaged in cellophane, boxed and deep frozen.
The chicken Marsala recipe you ordered might not be a freshly made dish, but rather something that was mass made a year ago and been sitting in the pub freezer all that time. Two minutes later, the microwave pings and your order is ready. We know of one famous British pub chain with only two dishes on the menu, which are cooked to order. The rest are frozen dinners but the menu descriptions obviously hide that fact.
Eating pub food might be fine occasionally but there is no getting away from the fact that homemade food is better for you. Not only does it work out much cheaper but also you know exactly what ingredients are going into your homemade recipes and you will not add all the colorings, preservatives and other chemical additives found in a lot of pub food.
