You will expect different types of food from different restaurants - pub food, caf food, fast food, and fine dining all fall under the category of meals from food outlets. We all expect there to be a world of difference between a meal from a fast food joint and a dinner from an award winning restaurant, both in quality and price, but what about pub food? Is pub food freshly made or mass-produced? Just how healthy is this kind of food?
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.
In the 1950s it was common to get “a pie and a pint,” with the steak and ale pies being made by the landlord’s wife. In the 1960s and 1970s, you could get chicken or scampi in a basket or, in Ireland, soda bread with Irish stew.
What is Modern Pub Food?
Nowadays, you can get meals like fish and chips, bangers and mash, hot pot, pasties or shepherd’s pie in pubs, as well as international recipes like chili con carne or lasagna. Popular pub recipes in Australia include steak, battered fish or chicken schnitzel served with fries, potato wedges or mashed potatoes and a side 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.
You might like to eat pub food now and again but you cannot compare it with homemade fare. Look at boneless chicken recipes for example. Chicken is used in lots of pub dishes because it is cheap, versatile and freezes well but did you know how quick and easy it is to make your own boneless chicken recipes at home? Not only that but it is cheaper to make your own food, you control the ingredients and your family will love you for it.
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