There is something absurd, and faintly insulting, about walking into a pub for a pint and being stopped by someone on the door – because they have those people now – and asked whether you’ll be eating, or whether you have a booking, perhaps. Say “no” and you might trigger that awkward bit of theatre usually reserved for restaurants where they check the iPad, do a cursory scan of the room full of empty tables with tablecloths and cutlery and wooden toblerones that say “reserved” and say, with pity in their eyes, “Sorry, we’re actually a gastropub? We don’t do that old-fashioned thing called drinking.”
When, exactly, did pubs stop being just pubs? When did eating at a pub become something more than a packet of crisps, a pork pie of uncertain vintage or, if the landlord was feeling particularly fancy, a ploughman’s?
