If the leading lights of Britain’s restaurant industry, its chefs, restaurateurs and financial backers, had sat down a decade ago and followed the example set by those in other industries and called in management consultants, arranged focus groups with their customers and participated in a bout of expensive, painful introspection, it is highly unlikely that they would have found as elegant or as satisfying a solution to their many problems as that which has emerged across the UK with the creation of so many excellent ‘gastro-pubs’.
This inelegant phrase may not do them justice but there is no doubt in my mind that the emergence of these relaxed, comfortable places has transformed how people in the UK can eat well and relatively inexpensively, created a particularly British environment in which to do so, and provided relatively simple solutions to complex structural problems.
Initially of course it provided a new lease of life for so many well located but sorely neglected pubs both in the inner-cities and the countryside. There may be some who still lament the disappearance of the dark, smoke-filled old boozers but they are likely to be those who never saw behind the bar. And the emergence of the gastro-pub has meanwhile proved a huge relief for many who lamented the fact that in those days packets of crisps were about the only food on offer.
The location of so many of these pubs, locals to so many, has meant not only that once they were transformed there was a ready market to allow these businesses to flourish, but also that those who took them over had to provide not only the restaurant food that justified the investment but also bar food, albeit of a far higher quality, to retain the drinkers. In doing so, many of these places have developed the sort of inexpensive, imaginative food available seven days a week which had hitherto been sadly missing across the UK.
Michael Belben, correctly acknowledged as the leader of this movement with his transformation of The Eagle in Farringdon Road, London EC1, could have had little idea that he was paving the way for the likes of two Australians, Zim Sutton and Andrew Veevers, to make such a success of The Easton in Clerkenwell that they have now opened The Princess in Shoreditch (once a strip joint and gangster hangout). While down in Battersea their fellow countryman, the wine-mad Mark van der Goot has had deserved success with The Greyhound and its 500 strong, keenly priced, wine list.
This movement has also introduced a new economic model for aspiring chefs who, having studied, trained and then worked 70-80 hours at hot stoves that could never be theirs, came to realise there was a new route to independence. Hitherto restricted by the hierarchical structure of kitchens which limits the number of Head Chef positions and the soaring costs of opening their own restaurant, numerous talented sous-chefs have decided to see run down pubs as a much more affordable path.
One recent exponent is Tom Kerridge, once of London’s Capital Hotel and most recently Head Chef at the estimable Adlard’s in Norwich, who with his wife Beth has recently taken over The Hand & Flowers (this romantic name dates back to a 14th century duel) just outside Marlow, Berkshire.
Kerridge explained his approach, “I want to strip away any pomp and ceremony and just work with good base ingredients to produce dishes with strong, clear flavours like Michael Bedford is doing at The Trouble House not that far away in Tetbury.” And the consequences were pretty obvious as we sat in the car park unable to tear ourselves away from the end of an exciting tennis match on the car radio, inhaling the warm aromas of well-cooked food.
These were even more enjoyable inside the low ceilinged, timbered restaurant where we started with a spicy gazpacho with olive croutons and a thin tart of plum tomatoes with whipped goats cheese and were then challenged by large, precisely cooked, fillets of sea trout with peas and pea sprouts and halibut with broad beans and potato gnocchi of which any Italian Mamma would have been proud . Strawberries poached in Champagne and a rum baba with mango were as refreshing and alcoholic as one another. The draught beer is excellent and only the wine list is currently disappointing – other than the Dom Perignon 1996, relatively under-priced at £105 a bottle.
But as in so many instances, the transformation of this pub goes far beyond the enormous difference in the quality of the food and the warmth of the welcome.
“We had a budget of £80,000 to spend on the place,” Kerridge explained, “but I had simply failed to imagine quite what an awful state the building was in. In the end we needed seven skips to take away all the rubbish and these cost £500 each, an amount I simply had not calculated for. Fortunately, friends helped with the painting, my sister-in-law, a professional interior decorator gave her advice for nothing and my father and wife lent me paintings for the walls so we did just come in under budget. But we have spent far less than if we had decided to go for any of the restaurant sites I was looking at.”
As well as injecting a seven hundred year old building with a new lease of life, Kerridge has also in the space of just four months created a viable business. “Turnover here in the last couple of years before we took over was no more than £500-600, barely enough to cover the rent. We’ve managed to increase this already to £6,000 per week and I hope that as we build our business mid-week this will increase even further.”
But what was most obvious in talking to an ebullient Kerridge was his appreciation of the opportunity the medieval Hand & Flowers had presented him with. At 31, he had fulfilled his dream of becoming a chef/proprietor.
The Hand & Flowers, 126 West Street, Marlow, Buckinghamshire 01628-482277. £25-30 per head. Closed Monday.
The Greyhound at Battersea, 136 Battersea High Street, SW11, 020-7978 7021,
The Easton, 22 Easton Street, WC1, 020-7278 7609,
The Princess, 76 Paul Street, EC2, 020-7729 9270,
The Trouble House Inn, Tetbury, Glos, 01666-502206.