Rog T's Food Blog #2 - Pub Snacks - Tuesday is food day

Welcome to the second installment of my food blog. I promised that this blog would be different to most food blogs. Today we look at a topic that is a much overlooked genre of bar food, one we often don't even give a second thought to. The good old bar snack. As I've said on many occasions in this blog over the last seventeen years, one of my greatest pleasures in life is to sit on my own in a pub, with a pint of the finest ale, a bag of nuts and the Evening Standard.  Not a session, just a quick drink, a moment's quiet and a snack, before facing the journey home.  I've written a song about the joy of doing this, it didn't make the final cut of our album release, but it's a song I rather like. A demo version is still on our Soundcloud page (See the Bottom of the page)

Sadly, the Standard is no longer published. It has been superceded by people staring at their phones. There is a whole generation who doesn't know the serenity of a pint of warm beer, a pint and a paper. On Saturday, I had a pint and a bag of crisps in the Dublin Castle in Camden. I was passing through and had fifteen minutes to waste. Sadly no paper to read. Nonetheless the pleasure in just wasting fifteen minutes of my life was wonderful.

As often happens in such moments, I got to thinking about the blogs I had planned for the week. I got to thinking about the bag of crisps in front of me and my food blog series. I have no idea of the total value to the UK economy of bar snacks sold with pints etc, in pubs in the UK in a year. Whilst the pubco's that have embarked on a mission to ruin our pubs have decided that "food is the future of the pub industry", there are still some of us that actively avoid foodie pubs when meeting up for a drink. That doesn't mean we don't get a bit peckish. In Spain, they invented the concept of Tapas. These were small snacks, that you nibble as you drink. Originally, Tapas were things such as olives, small bits of tortilla and perhps fried potatoes with a chilli sauce (patatas Bravas). Now we have Tapas restaurants. The concept has been lost. The food is accompanied by the drink and they have full main courses. 

When I started going to pubs, often the snacks were free. You'd see little dishes of crisps and salted nuts on the bar. On a Sunday, it would be salty roast potatoes. These were salty snacks, given freely to make customers more thirsty and drink more beer. The Pubco's then cottoned on to the idea that they could charge customers to make themselves thirsty. Now we have to buy our own snacks.

Now when such snacks were free, I never thought about it. Now the quality of such snacks in most pubs irritates me. Now I am not calling for pubs to become Tapas bars. Sure I'd love small plates of chorizo and gambas with my pint for a couple of quid, but I'd settle for a little bit more imagination. Most pubs these days sell Walkers crisps. To me, these are horrible. The Salt and Vinegar crisps use acetic acid rather than viengar (citric acid), it is shrp and tangy but has no flavour. The less fat crisps have the flavour of cardboard. The cheese and onion crisps taste of sweaty feet, not cheese or onion. As for the nuts, they sell Nobbys nuts. These are all uniformly shaped. They are designed to please the eye, not the tastebuds. They taste of wood chips. If you get proper, old school nuts, such as KP, you notice that the nuts are odd shapes. They are different types of peanuts, the round ones have a different taste to the flat ones and are more expensive for the suppliers to buy. In short, the old school nuts are a better product. Next time you are in the pub, bet some KP nuts and contrast how the different shaped nuts taste. 

Some of the best bar snacks are rarely found. Pork Scratchings are rare, pickled eggs even rarer. I cannot recall the last time I had a free roast potato. Now for the pubco's this doesn't matter. They look at profit margins on products. They are run by bean counters, who do not understand the value of a premium brand. They are not interested in selling beer, they want the food sales and see snacks as potentially damaging this. People eating crisps are taking up the space that a customer spending ten times as much on a plate of substandard food might spend, or they would be if pubs were full....

However, it is rare that I've been in a full pub recently. The exception has tended to be in central London and generally the pubs are pubs that are wet pubs (focus on selling beer). I've noted that these tend to sell better quality crisps and nuts. They also appear to have staff who know what they are doing. Maybe it's just me, but when I am in a pub and the beer is good and I enjoy the bar snacks, I am far more likely to make a mental note to go back. Of all the foods, it occurs to me that bar snacks have the most subliminal effect. No one will concsiously ever go to the pub because they sell great crisps and nut, but if they do, you are likeley to feel happy and develop a liking for the pub. 

I'll end with a few of my favourite bar snacks.

Whelks with black pepper & vinegar. Not had them for years. Back in the day, you'd get blokes with trays doing the rounds of pubs. Whelks, Cockles and Prawns all on offer. I've not seen one for donkeys years.

Roast spuds. I've mentioned these a few times. Delicious with a pint of  best. There was a time when all the local pubs would put them out on a Sunday.

Picked Eggs with salt and pepper. An acquired taste. I especially liked one of these inthe pub after I played football on a freezing Saturday afternoon in January. It just seemed right.

Burts sea salt and malt vinegar crisps. Taste like proper crisps. There was a phase when these seemed to be everywhere, now hard to find, even in supermarkets. They actually taste of salt and vinegar.

KP Original salted peanuts. The best. Simple as that!

 

The False Dots · Intermission In The The Ship

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