I consider it, to an extent, a personal failure that this matter still isn’t resolved. A couple of Sundays ago, on a visit to a gastropub in my suburban bit of Surrey, I enquired as to the pie of the day. Chicken, ham and leek, I was informed, served with seasonal veg and a choice of mash or chips.
So far, so good. A pub food classic, freshly prepared in the kitchen of a pub with a decent reputation for its menu. Chips were my chosen accompaniment, along with a pint of cask beer form a local brewer.
Sadly, though, what arrived was not, by my definition, a pie. It was a small casserole dish containing the filling as described, but with just a bit of puff pastry floating on top. That, in a phrase I first coined around 20 years ago, isn’t a pie. It’s just stew with a crouton.
Back then, I was food editor on The Publican, a weekly news magazine for the pub trade, That, in itself, puts us back in another age, pre the global financial crisis, when Britain’s pub sector – or more accurately, the advertisers targeting it – supported two national weekly pub magazines, along with several monthly titles.
So, my position gave me a certain amount of influence. Not quite as much as some people thought, including a friend who once borrowed my business card in the belief that the pub we were in would take his complaint about the paucity of the cheeseboard more seriously, but influence nonetheless.
So, when I expounded the principle in the pages of The Publican that the minimum requirement for a pie was that it be entirely encased in pastry, it had a real-world impact. We ran an awards programme, the Pub Food Awards, which recognised individual pubs and pub groups, and was something of a money-spinner for the magazine’s owners.
So, when I applied my principle of what does or does not constitute a pie to awards entries, it excluded certain pub groups from making the shortlist. Instead of taking the honourable course of revising their pie recipes accordingly, a couple of influential operators cried foul and tried to take the matter over my head.
I was invited into the publisher’s office to discuss my allegedly arbitrary and draconian stance. Surely, went the argument, this was a matter of personal preference? Could a compromise not be found?
I stood firm(ish), but soon after came the National Pie Week debacle. This was an initiative by a major food supplier, also an advertiser. As part of a sordid commercial deal, I was to lend it my gravitas by sitting on the panel that would judge the Best Pub Pie category
The company in question worked with a pub chef who had entered the competition. Apparently, there were high hopes, possibly even expectations, on both sides that he’d be successful. However, the recipe and accompanying pictures he submitted fell at the first hurdle as far as I was concerned. It was a casserole dish with a pastry topping. Stew with a crouton.
Words were exchanged. Things became heated. Perhaps, with hindsight, a number of the parties involved, including myself, might have considered using more temperate language. I had to have another conversation with the publisher. I’d love to be able to say it was more in sorrow than in anger, but in my long experience of publishers, they really only do the anger bit.
Events moved on, the global economy almost collapsed, the internet wreaked carnage on the trade publishing sector, and my tenure on the food desk of The Publican came to a sad and somewhat abrupt end.
Back to now. I’ve ordered the pie of the day at the pub in question before, and was treated to the full wraparound pastry experience. Cost engineering has clearly been employed, but sadly, the days when my opinion sent shockwaves through the sector are behind me. I am the Yesterday’s Man of Pub Food.
The beer that accompanied my pie, by the way, was in terrible condition. Cloudy, stale and well past the point where it should have been inflicted on an unsuspecting public. But that’s another rant…