Could it soon be last orders for your local? Four pubs close each day in the U.K., according to a survey by Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). The smoking ban and heavy alcohol duty have hit hard, with urban pubs faring the worst – recently, we've had to say good-bye to Crown + Woolpack, Tilted Wig, Kings Arms, Shakespeare and Turks Head among many, many others. Beer sales have slumped to the lowest level since the Great Depression, and CAMRA predicts that a pint will cost on average about £6.50 by the time the Olympics come to the capital. While all this paints a gloomy picture for bars, the pub's sibling – the gastropub – is bucking the trend.
The term gastropub was coined in the early '90s as this new informal and accessible way of eating high-quality food came to London. The first to open was The Eagle on Farringdon Road in 1991. It created the shabby-chic style with mismatched furniture, a policy of no reservations, no tabs and a simple regularly changing menu. A few years later, Anglesea Arms, a textbook example of a gastropub, opened in Shepherd's Bush. London's top-rated gastropub, Anchor & Hope, didn't open in Waterloo until 2003.
Indeed, this successful formula has been much copied over the years, from chains that turned the basic shoestring look into an interior design cliché to celebrity chefs jumping onto the bandwagon for their second restaurants, like Heston Blumenthal, who opened the
Hind's Head next to
The Fat Duck in 2005. More recently,
Gordon Ramsay converted three pubs into bona fide gastropubs:
The Narrow,
The Warrington and
The Devonshire.
Foodies, however, need to be watching out for the new breed of gastropub that's being created by large breweries. While mimicking the relaxed pub style, they often serve poor-quality microwave meals. A telltale sign is that the chalkboard is painted on – the menu never changes. While these pseudo-gastropubs may be endangering our good old-fashioned boozers, there are plenty of real gastropubs enriching London’s culinary scene. A pint of real ale has never tasted better than when served with a hearty portion of unctuous slow-cooked pork belly or homemade fish 'n' chips.
- Eleanor Smallwood