The politics of drinking
             December 10, 2024

No beef, but…. 

This article first appeared in the Propel Info newsletter on April 14, 2023

It was one of those sudden spring days, the sun bursting out of a blue sky for a few hours before disappearing once more into the gloom. It would be a crime not to spend some time in its warmth, and it was Sunday, too. I thought I should take a wander across town, perhaps score a roast somewhere. I hadn’t done that in a while.

Sunshine slanted through the pub’s windows and conversations buzzed among the aromas of gravy and slightly scorched Yorkshires. They may not have a table. But in what was once called the public bar there were a few free, and only one topped by the tell-tale Toblerone “reserved” sign. Good.

While waiting for the chap to pour my beer I was asked by two other staff whether I was being served. Impressive. 

“Will there be anything else?”

I asked for the roast beef, and he reached for one of those small pads and wrote down my order.

“Which table are you on?”

I pointed to the smallest, not wanting to take up unnecessary space.

“Have you booked?”

I hadn’t.

“I’m afraid we’re only doing bookings. Sorry about that,” he added as he scratched out my roast beef with a finality that felt like a punch to my rumbling solar plexus and pre-empted any protest.

I took my beer to the agonisingly free table and became immediately distracted by the particularly good-looking pint of Harvey’s Best topped with a deep head of crisp white foam. From here I could see the back of the pumps. No sparklers. Interesting.

I took a picture of my pint and started to compose a tweet. Perhaps I shouldn’t mention the sparkler thing. Too controversial. Instead, I expressed my annoyance at not being allowed to eat despite the empty tables. It had happened to me before and I understood why pubs do it, though they seem to do it more since the pandemic.

It does feel odd to be denied food when there’s a table in front of you, but, really, I had no beef, in either sense, so I didn’t include the name of the pub. That turned out to be the right decision. 

It began with a few “likes”, straws in the wind ahead of the coming Twitter storm. Within ten minutes I was being tweeted at from all directions, mostly by people I didn’t know with strong opinions. It went on into the night and into the next day. It became my most “successful” tweet. Clearly many were more bothered about my predicament than I was myself.

At one extreme I was urged never to set foot in such a rotten pub ever again. And in any case the business was doomed if it continued with such horrendous practices. At the other extreme I didn’t know what I was talking about. I should’ve booked like everyone else, no matter that I didn’t know I was going to end up at that pub.

And to be fair there were many useful contributions in-between, and as I replied to what I had to reply to, trying to dampen down the row, certain thoughts congealed.

Personally, having been in many pub kitchens and wondered how they could bring together all the elements of a Sunday roast in such cramped conditions, I could see the limit on lunches served may be determined not by how many tables you’ve got but by how much equipment and how many staff you can squeeze in back-of-house.

In a blinding revelation I realised these people eating sadistically in front of me had not, in reality, booked a table – they had booked a plate of food. This is the way to see it.

A growing awareness of food wastage could be another factor, and that’s a positive thing, though it also reflects increasing cost pressures. The pub in question, too, might have been caught out by the fine weather that attracted customers into the garden unexpectedly increasing the potential covers.

There was a time when pubs could serve Sunday’s leftovers the next day, as cold roast beef sandwiches and bubble-and-squeak. Delicious. But few pubs open on a Monday now.

These operational quirks, the stricter controls, seem to have become more embedded since the pandemic. In a way it reflects a growing professionalism, but I worry we’re losing something.

Pubs epitomise casual dining. It’s a different experience if you have to book. I want to be able to drop into a pub on a whim and have something to eat. That’s harder to do now on a Sunday, when demand often exceeds supply, and life feels a little poorer for it.

In case you care, by the time I got to the next pub it had run out of food, and the pub after that was closed, awaiting demolition. Never mind, though, there was a lasagne in the fridge.

Phil Mellows, April 14, 2023

Previously:

No beef, but….   

Folk devils and nitrous oxide

The joy of loitering

The return to the local

Larry Nelson and the challenge of trade journalism

What we'll be losing if pubs disappear

Diary Archive 

Latest reviews: 

The Old Oak

Joker

The Sisters Brothers

Us

Peterloo

Reviews