Stephen Jardine: Taste of things to come for pub grub

ONCE upon a time, pubs were just for drinking. Back then any food was basic and to the point.

When Detective Inspector John Rebus became peckish between pints, the Oxford Bar could always supply a beetroot and corned beef roll but little else in the culinary stakes.

In Dundee I remember once asking a barman in a notorious boozer if they served food. “We’re no a restaurant”, he replied with a heavy seasoning of obscenities for good measure.

Then things started to change. Alterations to the licensing laws made pubs more attractive to families and with them came bar meals.

To distinguish them from ordinary meals they were served in baskets. I hope whoever came up with that genius piece of marketing enjoyed a suitable reward. The simple addition of a wicker basket transformed scampi and chips from a takeaway to a sit-down meal. And there was the less adventurous, but still sensational, chicken in a basket.

Then, just when you thought eating in pubs couldn’t get more exciting, along came the microwave oven. Thanks to this piece of technology, pub menus suddenly went from a single sheet to a thick-bound volume.

One famous pub in Edinburgh had a kitchen smaller than an outside toilet, with probably the same standard of cleanliness, yet it offered a menu featuring dozens and dozens of dishes.

But there are only so many times you can get first-degree burns from the molten cheese on the top of a lasagne and keep going back for more, so another change in pub food was due.

In 1991 the Eagle bar in Clerkenwell in London led the next big move offering a more sophisticated menu and coining the term “gastropub”. That meant smarter surroundings and food to match. Twenty years on we now even have a pub with two Michelin stars. At the Hand and Flowers in Marlow, Tom Kerridge serves up Berigoule Mushroom, English lettuce and Prickly Ash for £26.

We haven’t yet reached those dizzy heights in Scotland but things have definitely changed for the better, although in the past few weeks I’ve had flabby fish and soggy oven chips in a pub in the Borders which should have know better.

But on the outskirts of Edinburgh, I’ve also had a perfectly cooked piece of beef served with imaginative side dishes that would have been quite at home on the menu at an expensive steak restaurant. In my view, that’s far enough. I don’t think pubs should have Michelin stars but I also don’t think they should be serving up stale bread, cheese and pickle and calling it a Ploughman’s.

So what’s next? On the counter at Joseph Pearce’s in Edinburgh the other day I found the answer in a neat pile of foil-wrapped teacakes. Anyone for a Tennent’s and a Tunnock’s chaser? You heard it here first.