Pretentious menus, unpronounceable drinks and ghastly clientele - welcome to the gastropub
Mick has been coming to 'The Cockerel's Plumage' since it was known as 'The Fighting Cocks'. Every evening, he comes in for his pint of bitter and tries to sit in what used to be 'Mick's Corner', under the previous landlord, Fat Tom. But Fat Tom is now calling time at the great boozer in the sky, along with Bozo, Wonga, Fred The Bed and the others. Mick's Corner has long gone, replaced by a smoothie machine.
Not long out of university, this twenty-something takes a break from a regime of caning it to share an awkward Sunday lunch with Mum and Dad. Well, Dad did stump up the deposit for a flat. The parents are discouraged from dallying with dessert and persuaded to return to the Home Counties as soon as possible so that junior can spark up a fattie.
Jason used to work in a dead-end job in the City. Earning a telephone number salary, driving a Ferrari and having an endless procession of nubile blonde girlfriends didn't cut it for him. What he wanted to do was to work in a pub, a real old-fashioned pub, just like the ones he used to go to at Harrow. Of course, there were a few things he had to sort out - like getting rid of all that nasty fag-stained decor - after all, so important to get the right kind of clientele in, isn't it? No wonder Tatler has already mentioned it in dispatches.
Who would have thought stripping the walls down to bare brick, knocking out all the partitions and installing a dozen tables of braying hung-over diners would make such a racket? Throw in somebody's Converse-clad mate harassing the decks and some patrons yet to trouble their beds and it's like eating on a runway.
"I'm not really hungry. Can I just have a starter? The soup. Perhaps two starters? Do you do the roast as a starter? No? Maybe some chips. Five chips. No, six. What do I want? Maybe I should ask the chef to make me a salad. Could he do that? Oh, just the menu. Ok. What do I want?" Perhaps we should just vivisect you, rip out your stomach and ask it.
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