It's hard to fathom. What's to blame? Excesses of consumerism, marketing etc Bred on cheap, processed mass produced convenience foods designed to feed the masses for maximum profit? Intergenerational kitchen know-how lost due to the above? I dunno.
Keith Floyd used to own this pub. Nearly bankrupted him. Not surprising hearing the tales the locals have about his time there. Stayed in the village 3 times. Last time in the building to the far left. Open the gate, stroll a few yards and you were in the pub. Great food and a fine selection of ciders and gins. Probably my favourite pub. please log in to view this image
They were de rigeur when to you went to your grandparents. Still about when I was young given the propensity of people to plaster Brylcreem all over their hair until the Beatles and Stones liberated us from all that.
Take the piss all you like all of you, with your pretentious snot on a stick winkles, muscles, prawns, whelks, shrimps, crab and any other abomination other than good old fish and chip, from Bob Carvers or any other fish and chip shops, no scraps these days though.
Love fish and chips. Not Carvers or the vastly over rated Cave Street though. Still get scraps round my way. My local chippie won fish and chip shop of the year 5 or 6 years ago. Charlie and Camilla went in there for a photoshoot on a visit to Brid. The lass behind the counter asked a totally bemused Camilla if she wanted scraps with her fish and chips.
Next time you are in Brid go down on North Beach, where the beach huts are. There is one there which is excellent. Runner up for the National Award of best new fish and chip shop last year.Dearer, given he location and shorter trading season but really good. They use the same traceability methods. The one you went to is an even bigger bind to get parked now as the post office on the corner has been converted to a late opening mini mart.
Didn’t Floyd have a recurring problem with setting up restaurants, doing them up & then running them into the ground, financially. Usually leaving small businesses with money troubles as he’d failed to pay them? A bit of a **** in my view.
I enjoyed his programmes Ben then I read his biography, or autobiography or whatever, and yes you are right, along with his womanising, playing on his tv popularity, he was not a man to be trusted at anything to do with business. The book left me with a total different scenario from his cheery, cheeky cookery programme, which I must admit I still like watching the re-runs, to his actual day to day life. Rouge comes to mind, big time.
Not at this one, from what locals were saying. He used to hand out bottles of expensive wine to locals and let some run up huge tabs. One owed him over £30,000. When I was there some work was being done. Apparently tbe builder was another who had run up a huge tab, buggered off abroad and had now returned. Some locals were aggrievedmwith him and got the new owner to say he couldn't come in until he carried out some work to make up for what he had lumbered Floyd with. What irked some people eas Floyd upped the prices to £25 plus fora main course, a lot for a pub bsck in,the 1980s, but wasn't actually doing any cooking himself, just popping in now and again for a piss up basically.
Not Brylcream but Trugel in my day. It would keep even Trump's hair in place when he gets off a plane.
Yes, used to use a mixture of Trugel and water to set an Elvis type quiff like concrete. Some used to use petroleum jelly and water for a similar effect. Thank heaven by the time I was 14 the Stones had come along. Mind you a couple of years later we were nicking mother's hairspray for a back-combed mod style much to my dad's equal mixture of amusement and disgust at these strange going ons.
They should have been grateful, the chef at the Maltsters Arms was Jean Cristophe Novelli, who was a far better chef than Floyd. He was a fairly poor chef and an even worse businessman, but he was very entertaining on telly.