As Tom Kerridge’s Hand & Flowers is named top UK gastropub for the third year running, Jo Bruce asks whether it is time the phrase gastropub was brought in from the cold.
The PMA’s Budweiser Budvar Top 50 Gastropub Awards 2014 took place this week. No doubt some of you will groan at the use of the term gastropub as the title of these awards, which are now in their eighth year.
There have been dozens of articles written in consumer and trade titles in the past couple of years, since the Good Food Guide banished the term from its pages in 2011, as to whether the term is now defunct.
They, along with many in our industry, will feel the term helped remove character from traditional pubs and became an abused term, with some operators diluting the core values of the gastropub that Belben and Eyre set when they launched the Eagle in Farringdon, back in 1991 (when a pint of beer cost £1.40 and Belben paid 10p each for the knifes his customers ate with!).
Plenty of licensees have shunned using the term for their businesses, feeling there needs to be a new description for pubs that cook real food for real people.
Having interviewed hundreds of pub operators in the past decade as the PMA’s pub food expert, it is a term that still continues to prompt much passion and strong opinion.
Many argue there are now craft pubs, restaurants in pubs ,food-led pubs and some bona-fide gastropubs.
New variations have sprung up including– ‘bar and kitchen’, ‘pub and dining rooms’ and ‘bistropubs’.
But have we now reached a point where the gastropub has come full circle and is again an acceptable term to use that Joe public still relate to?
Where’s 10 years ago more space in many gastropubs was given over to diners, chefs were often guilty of serving their customers dishes with foams and lakes and wine glasses were laid up on every table, operators are now at pains to make sure there is plenty of space just for drinkers and shout about their drinking credentials.
The pub has now been put back into gastropub. But pub doesn’t suffice for me as a descriptor for these also amazing food businesses and the gastro remains important.
I feel in 2014 its great to be called a gastropub , if gastropub means good food in keeping with the pub atmosphere, a great drinks offer and space just for drinkers, good value and good fun.
There are certainly plenty of pubs with these qualities again, true to the original values of the gastropub, and I’m proud that our Top 50 Gastropub Awards 2014 reflect exactly these type of businesses.
Certainly some leading new gastropub operators seem to have no problem billing themselves as such – Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin’s Scran & Scallie calls itself Edinburgh’s leading gastropub and Wagamama founder Alan Yau’s hotly anticipated Duck & Rice is being referenced as a gastropub.
Perhaps the industry’s search for a new term for gastropub is now over?
