The top 100 British pubs? There are ten in the list that I’d really recommend
The Good Food Guide has unveiled its inaugural list of the nation’s best watering holes.
It’s the good food guide. To pubs.
This is what the list is all about, says the guide’s owner and publisher, Adam Hyman. “It’s a guide for how normal people use a pub to eat and drink.
That pubs are now restaurants is xactly what’s gone wrong with hte country.
Bah. Humbug. Boozers, that’s what the place needs, boozers.
You might as well eat in pubs. It’s been a long time since there was anybody in them worth drinking with. They got rid of them years ago.
It occurs. There probably are good boozers. But none of them would want to appear on Best Pubs lists. The sort that do are full of red faced, overweight blokes in Pull & Bear leisurewear going “Har, har har…Har, har har” like an Old Boys Association meeting. You know a good boozer, you keep very quiet about it.
The other problem, is that the price of beer has put off the casual drinker. “Pop out for a pint” or “Never known to pass an open pub” will cost £5 at least for just one.
If you’re going down the pub, you might as well do the whole thing and have din dins as well
Come now Otto. No person worth drinking with would consume solids in licensed premises. Even a pickled egg is frowned on.
I dunno.. Personally I reckon you can’t beat “a bag o’ scratchins”… But I live in the civilised midlands where we do these things properly. 🙂
I’m not sure you can still get scratchings in the uncivilised Midlands, Baron.
I briefly worked in Luton in the ‘90s. A butcher there made his own superb pork scratchings, just to annoy the then growing minority Muslim agitators.
Shouldn’t think he’s there any more.
Not In My Day. A pub near work was good for a pint and a good pie. With crisps that made a lunch on a Friday.
Mind you, the choice was that or a pickled egg. And since afternoon work beckoned a second pint would have been unwise for a young cove.
Yeah, but lunchtime drinkers are different from evening drinkers. Half of the lunchtime mob will be under the wifely cosh by nine o’clock
Back in the day, a sausage on a stick was quite popular with the ‘lunchtime crowd’ in the pub I worked in!
Two words. Smoking ban
A bit too simplistic Bucko. ‘Spoons have had premises in Ireland for over ten years but have put their pubs outside of Dublin up for sale. A survey into why 2000 Irish pubs have closed in the last twenty years did not mention smoking once.
“The research additionally included surveying 600 pubs and restaurants to find out the biggest factors impacting each of them and discovered that nearly one in four had seen their business costs rise 20-30% over the past two years”. And then add the fact that fewer people are drinking.
And if people do want a fag, they only have to go outside FFS………
Drink drive laws impacted pubs “down the country”. If the pub is 5 miles away and there is no public transport, how does on get to/from the place?
It wasn’t really the drink drive laws. We had them for years. It was when they started enforcing them.
I spent a period living in a village out in Essex. Everybody drank & drove. And it was nothing like the carnage people think it was. You’d had a few, you took it easy. Police largely ignored it. They stopped you, thought you’d had too much, told you to leave the car, walk home. Even give you a lift.
Really changed when police stopped being local & started being run out of Chelmsford. It wasn’t the local copper who knew you any more it was the jam-sandwiches. They’d set traps & have pulling sprees. So it wasn’t about driving badly but not passing the breathyliser. Pretty well killed all the pubs needed transport to get to. So you lost all the good ones people used to socialise in because a busy pub wasn’t bothering the neighbors because it didn’t have any.
I’d say the link between drinking & driving & accidents isn’t nearly as clear as it’s made out to be. Some people drive in a way they have accidents whether they’ve been drinking or not. So the reduction in accidents was more that there were less people driving. What was surprising was how few accidents there were. Considering the road conditions & the cars we were all driving. Narrow tyres, half of them cross-plies. No ABS systems or even power brakes. Dim headlamps. Lousy roadholding. On often half flooded roads or with inches of snow on them.
Pendantry as to whether it was the enactment of the drink drive laws or the enforcement of them. In either case, the pub trade suffered.
Drink driving laws have been around almost as long as the car.* They didn’t just spring out of nowhere in 1980 something.
*Actually longer. They carried over from regulations regarding horse drawn & ridden.
My reply was to Addolff about the ‘spoons experiment in Ireland.
The drink drive laws there were enacted in the late 60s and weren’t enforced in the countryside until much later.
The phrase “down the country” means pretty much everything outside Dublin.
Perhaps people are less complacent when they actually have to drive a car, rather than sit in a motorised armchair watching the computer do stuff.
I suspect so. It’s like all this bleating about potholes. By people weren’t driving in the 60s & 70s. On the rural roads, where they do a lot the bleating now, they were far worse. You drove, always aware that round the next corner could be something you could disappear in. So you didn’t just drive through that puddle as if it wasn’t there. You straddled it & if you couldn’t do that, slowed right down & edged through it cautiously. It’s like all these cars you see on the news abandoned in floods (Or even the odd drowning tragedy) We didn’t drive into the water in the first place unless you knew for sure it was only a couple of inches. And then, very, very, very slowly. And we had cars with more ground clearance.
My parents’ stories of rural life in the 60s and 70s suggest everyone on the road after dark at the weekend was pissed.
Why else would they have been out?
1970s? It was still like that when I started driving in the ‘80s, and that wasn’t even in a very rural area.
Might have been different if you lived in a Guardian-reading area, but in my experience the real shift, when disapproval of drink-driving became normal rather than faddish, was with the growth of neo-Puritanism in the mid ‘90s.
Then I moved to Dorset around 2000 and found drink driving was still socially acceptable down here; that lasted another 10 years or so before the disapproval reached this far.
That’s how I remember it happening in N Yorks.
Before the crackdown the local police might park a car outside a venue where a lot of DD might happen as a deterrent or let it be known where the police cars will be parked. If you got caught there was little sympathy from anyone.
In N Yorks they could also do random stops during the game season if they suspected poaching, so even if you weren’t driving irrationally or had a bulb out you could still be stopped.
Another area around drinking that was tolerated if not even encouraged by the local police was under age drinking. They knew which pubs did it and were happy as long as the landlord, usually the landlady, kept it under control. The landlady of the pub I drank in when back on leave was my mum’s best mate and knew exactly how old I was, she even sent me a card on my 18th.
We often talk about the way continentals bring their children up to respect alcohol and drinking environments, but that was how we managed it.
“A survey into why 2000 Irish pubs have closed in the last twenty years did not mention smoking once.”
Well, unfortunately, a lot of the people running pubs couldn’t even seem to process basic facts, like what happened when Spoons ran a trial before the ban. People around the Welsh borders going to English pubs where they could still smoke. The British pub lobby constantly talked about the price of supermarket booze.
The UKIP bloke in Swindon ran a small hotel with a bar and he said that trade collapsed within a fortnight.
Every “wet” village pub around Swindon closed or became a food pub.
“And if people do want a fag, they only have to go outside FFS”
Which is why I stopped meeting my mate in Oxford. Because you just made pubs worse than his home. We’re having a chat, and he fancies a smoke, chat gets suspended as he goes outside. Or we both stand outside in the cold. Now imagine a group of half a dozen of you, with various people dipping out for 10 minutes for a fag. It’s shit.
People have habits and if you mess around with things, what you might find is that they re-assess the habit. Hey, we’ve both got phones. Do I need to sit in a pub until you arrive or do you call me to let me know when you’re home?
And once you start hitting a few smokers (who were the backbone of a pub) the whole thing falls apart. It’s a network and like any other network, the value is in the size. My local used to be heaving. You had regulars, like the guy that used to own my house, a few blokes I worked with and as the beer was great, some CAMRA guys. They all left with the smoking ban. Which didn’t just hit them not going, but I’d go and there would be almost no-one in thee, so why would I walk the dog down now? If I wanted beer I could just keep some in from Tesco.
The funny thing about that pub. The owner sold it just before the ban. He’d gone to Wales for a holiday and was talking to a publican. Remember, Wales did it before England. And this guy told him a tale of woe. He turned it into a research trip and immediately sold up to a brewery that wanted the pub.
My ex smokes, my daughter and son in law vape. They have no problem going outside.
In a lot of places the demographic has changed massively, young people don’t drink as much as we used to when we were their age and there are so many more things to do now. And how many people would really want to sit in a pub full of fag smoke?
p.s. 400 pubs / bars have closed in Japan over the last two years. Smoking is allowed…..
Here’s something anecdotal from the early 80s. That Essex village. Mix of agricultural locals & commuter dormitory. 4 pubs in the High Street. The Crown, The Bell, The Star & the Anchor. Crown was mostly middle-class commuter, Bell had a public bar so 1/3 2/3, Star & Anchor mostly locals
Crown changed hands & the new bloke floated the idea of making it non-smoking. Yes! Yes! & rubbing of hands from the white pullover mob. So it went non-smoking. First couple weeks, lots of white pullovers, few couples from the other pubs (one suspects a female influence) trade even slightly up but my spy behind the bar reported takings a bit down. Maybe because it emptied well before closing.From then on it lost customers. Even white pullovers could be found roosting in the Bell. By the end of the month the guv’ner ended the experiment & went back to smoking.
Question: Are smokers more congenial company? Despite the smoke.
FWIW my personal favourite, The George at Burpham, cracks the list at #35. Excellent yet unpretentious food while the ales (try the Bluebell) are everything you could wish for. Anyone in West Sussex could do a lot worse than pay them a visit.
Out of interest, how many times a week do you go there?
What defines a good pub isn’t the food or some novelty ale. It’s a good bunch of regulars to have a drink & a chat with. A home from home. That’s what a pub used to be.
Yup. Agreed.
Which is why all these “pub guides” (even the beer-focused CAMRA one) are useless, because a pub is about the people, not the product, and it’s impossible to measure and codify that into a guidebook.
My father resisted serving food in the ’70s but eventually cracked because that’s what people wanted.
He hated doing chips because he reckoned that the fat got in to the atmosphere and flattened the beer. This was at a time of proper hand pull pumps with auto-back and the head lined the inside of the glass as you drank.
At least he was using fat not oil.
The Glue Pot in Swindon is probably the best boozer in the town and a 10 minute walk from the station.
It might be a good pattern, pubs near railway stations. People pop in for a pint before a train, meet up after work. No-one wants food, but it can sustain being a boozer with that demand. The Queen’s Tap and the Great Western are good too (and nearer).
When I worked in Reading we used to go to the Three Guineas by the station on a Friday after work. It was rammed. You’d go, have a few drinks and at some point, decide to catch a train home.
The Three Guineas is yet another dreadful, soulless place these days. One problem might be that the station has been redesigned to make it very difficult to get to the actual trains. The other thing is that there is no standing room. You are forced to sit at tables
There are plenty of pubs in Suffolk that have an eating area and a separate bar for drinkers. One of my locals has ‘The Village Bar’ where I can nearly always find an acquaintance with whom I can chew the fat. Even in my local ‘Spoons, it’s very easy to strike up a conversation with the regulars. As for the smoking ban, only 11.9% (2023) of UK adults smoke (11.6% in England); so the effect is now minimal (even if it had an initial effect).
How do they know how many people smoke? Not from how many people go to tobacconists, that we can be sure. And the people buy hooky baccy are the people least likely to be surveyed.
There’s a lot of selection bias there too. Nightclubs, back when I used to do that (and OK, that’s going back a bit) , seemed to be about 50% smokers. When they banned that indoors here, a lot of places demolished walls and moved them further inside to create more outdoor space. Which is where pretty much everyone was.
The general population rate of smoking is not very helpful when it comes to designing rules for pubs, even if it’s accurate, which it probably isn’t. So Theophrastus, there could be more effect than you think. This is where smokers and boozers go, so it’s not going to be representative.
Ltw
…even if it’s accurate, which it probably isn’t.
The ONS Annual Population Survey is reliable for such national-level data – not least because it’s repeated annually and with a large sample.
So Theophrastus, there could be more effect than you think.
Possibly: but that is not what the number of smokers in the UK suggests.
This is where smokers and boozers go, so it’s not going to be representative.
Smokers go to all the places that non-smokers go – and, presumably, in similar numbers. The majority of pub-goers are non-smokers; and smokers don’t seem to mind being prevented from smoking at the bar in summer (when they can smoke outside) or in winter (if a sheltered space is provided): they have adapted! And my observations in my local suggest that only the same two or three drinkers out of 20 go out for a fag every hour or two.
How do they know how many people smoke?
The ONS Annual Population Survey, which is reliable for such national-level data – not least because it’s repeated annually and with a large sample.
So a sample of curtain twitchers nationwide.
Dismissing a reliable annual empirical survey (with a large sample) suggests you are sub-rational….Not a good look.
My priorities for a good pub are
1. Regulars who enjoy a drink and a chat. I mean, you’ve gone out for reason, right? Change of scenery, catch up friends, whatever.
2. A good smoking area. I’ll happily go outside, in fact I hardly ever sit inside, but it’s not hard to fit out an area with nice tables/chairs, shelter, heat in winter, ventilation in summer. But I don’t want to nip out for five minutes, I more or less want to set up shop for the duration. Our current local has the best smoking courtyard I’ve ever had the pleasure to drink at.
3. Reasonably priced drinks, although this is low on the list compared to the rest. They seem to happen together though.
Food? Well, nice to have the option, but I don’t care much about it as long as it’s ok if I really need it. Generally these days I do the after work hour and a half or so at the pub then come home for dinner, so it’s not a huge concern.
The smoking ban was one contributing factor. Drink and drive another. That supermarkets can sell you drinks at a fraction of the cost that pubs charge is another. What reason is there for me pay £7.50 for a glass of very average Malbec in one of the only five locals in my town, when I can buy in Aldi a BOTTLE of passable Malbec by Pierre Jaurant for under a fiver, pour it into a properly clean glass that hasn’t been handled by unwashed hands and drink it in company I like?
But, one factor I’ve not seen mentioned is the soaring rents demanded by ever greedier breweries and pub companies.
Some years ago, I knew a young-ish married couple who were friends of my daughter. In their 30s and with absolutely no experience of running a business, they wanted to take on a local pub, previously a purely wet house and crisps place, that had been shut for some time. He worked as a “chef” in a burger joint and it was to be him doing the cooking and her front of house. Starry-eyed, they asked me what I thought of the idea.
My first question was to ask them how much the rent was. It was £30,000 pa. No financial wizard I but, when I pointed out that if they included all the myriad costs as in power, stock, staff, insurance, cleaning etc etc etc, they could probably add a conservative £20,000 to that, meaning they’d have to take a grand a week just to stand still. Minimum, and that without taking a wage out of it for either. Not to mention the hours to be worked necessary to re-start a previously closed business.
Coupled to the onerous brewery tie that came with the deal, it would have been financial suicide. I’ve no idea what rents/leases are like now, but I’d bet they ain’t cheap.
I gather the Politbureau in Madrid have legislated from the end of the year smoking in the outside areas of bars & restaurants will be banned as well as inside. Now it’ll get interesting. If you look now, for most of the year the outside areas are where customers roost & the insides are often empty. And this is a country where a lot of people smoke. Far more than the UK. And the Spanish aren’t people to take a lot of notice of laws. There’s still plenty of bars you can smoke inside now. Particularly in the campo (countryside). Depends on how much it’s being enforced by the police. ( I don’t think the Guardia bother. They’re mostly smoking in bars) My money’s on they’ve overeached themselves. They might even lose the inside compliance. Either way, it’s going to piss a lot of people off.