The Tally Ho, Bouldon - The Lesser Spotted ‘Proper’ Pub Lunch
The Pub Lunch!
You would be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t agree that it’s an institution, a tradition, a badge of honour in the multicultural food world of this country. One of the pure food identities we seem to have in our ever diversifying world. Quite frankly, it's a celebration! Yet I can’t help but feel that it’s a star that’s fading. There’s something a little Thelma & Louise happening, riding off into the sunset with hope in the air, willingly about to throw itself off a cliff having given up the chase. Landing atop so many of our other food celebrations and traditions in a massive pile of rubble. The image might seem a little dramatic and maybe a touch dystopian, maybe even negative; but this is unfortunately where I feel like we are headed in our ever changing and speeding up food world.
The world now celebrates efficiency, it celebrates repetition and it's creating a quest for the mundane; for mediocre consistency, a lack of uniqueness and for some bizarre reason people seem to be excited by it! There seems to be a race ensuing to become as middle of the road as possible. The people seem to want it! Crowds gathering at the Colosseum to watch the last great fighter for individuality get pummelled into the crowd by a terrfyingly powerful creature! ‘ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?’
I totally get it though, why risk something brilliant when we can just reproduce mediocre and a fraction of the cost with ultimately no risk. Convenience is now King……a brutal and belligerent ruler, willing to trample anyone in their way.
Commercially the food world has never been so risky. Unfair VAT, rising overheads, customers not wanting to part with their cash so easily. Even a certain argument that middle class cooking habits have risen to a height where the ‘I can cook better at home’ is ringing more true than ever; and so the decision to look at convenience kind of makes sense. Let’s face it from a business owner and employee point of view, the food world pays so many peoples bills, keeps roofs over families, food on their table and school uniforms on their kids. So why would you take risks? Why not just follow the pattern, follow the foolproof way to make something work?
Without question the maths stacks up. Why would you pay all the overheads and apply all the stress associated with food prep from scratch when you could pay a central hub to do all the hard work for you. They’ll even deliver the food in lovely convenient vac packed bags with lovely labels containing the ‘cooking instructions’ which in reality are reheating instructions. Wipe out variance, increase consistency and keep your prices down - what is not to love with that?! Who cares about the heart and soul, right?
You know your customers will love it because it's basically the same as the other 4-5 establishments nearby. Familiarity will always be popular. We are habitual creatures who crave what we know and we are generally averse to risk taking. Give us enough of anything for a long enough time and we will lean towards it to a point of obsession. It will scratch that addictive processed food itch that we all have deep down and will always just about scrape past any customer expectations based on price alone! ‘Developed by Chefs’ but served without the cost of employing one - magic!
I know what you’ll be thinking…..’he’s off on one of his rambling tangents.....but what on Earth has this got to do with a pub lunch, Steve?.....Have you woken up on the wrong side of the bed?....What’s with the whole Negative Nelly thing?.....There are pub lunches literally everywhere?!’
The thing about a pub lunch is its steeped in tradition and utterly joyful nostalgia. From sunny days in a beer garden to rainy days inside. It’s an all encompassing comfort that always delivers something for everyone. Smothered in a familiarity from pub to pub, every menu hits a similar note. Yet at the same time every single one is completely unique. There’s true joy in that.
You could order fish and chips in 50 different pubs and be able to talk easily about the joyful nuances and differences between each one. Some better than others from a multitude of points of view. All opinions, all welcome, none more important than others. Yet every single portion of fish and chips will be recognisable, every one worth the experience, every one tickling that familiarity itch enough for us to enjoy the delicious offerings. Maybe it's whatever pie they are serving, what's the flavour of the month? How buttery is the pastry? How soggy is the bottom?.....Maybe really soggy if you're doing the British thing of sitting in a beer garden in mid April, in the rain, clinging on to the dopamine hit from the first warm day of the year the week before, now a cold prisoner in your own shorts until October, refusing to admit it isn't summer yet! My point being that every pie can be different, every fish and chips can be different, every ploughman’s can be a talking point about what style of pickled onions are served but that’s ok, if anything that’s more than ok, there's genuine joy in these differences! All these things used to have one thing in common and that was being made in house.
The fish had only ever seen fresh batter at the very last step of its delicious journey. It knew nothing of its pre-battered, freezing cold cousins sitting in the freezer for months. No idea what the back of a Brake’s Brothers van smelt like. Even the peas were living a happier life in full pea form for almost their entire existence, ignorant to their forthcoming, last minute mushy demise, glowing happy greenness right up until the end!
With the development of gastropubs; the booming trend that kicked in real force in the early noughties; along came a commercial opportunity. As with all food trends, commercial overlords start to rub their hands as they see a chance to steam roller it all and make some money.
Pubs became the ultimate assets. Corporations formed and focussed entirely on collecting them all. Centralising the heart and soul, edging it away from uniqueness and towards their own dream of mundane consistency. Creating a catalogue of winning formulae., from interiors to drinks and food menus. Let’s take the winning formula and repeat it 500 times, exactly the same. What soul the pub had now belonged to the dark overlords and with it went the soul of the pub lunch. Any signs of uniqueness, any personality would start to blend into the same mediocre blandness that the entire family of pubs were dishing out. Everything would come out of the back of a freezer van. Defrosted to order, reducing waste, reducing overheads, reducing labour but absolutely smashing profit margins.
From this point the dark clouds started to gather over the traditions of the old school pub lunch, the shining celebration was a little more tarnished, a little less exciting! The overlords become more and more powerful as time ticks on. Corporations casting their black magic over it all. Forcing commercial efficiency and creating a new system where freshly cooked uniqueness can barely survive, suffocating it with its unrivalled pricing, changing expectations to fit their business plans and consistently delivering mediocrity ‘at the right price’. They’ve created a misguided value for money that really shouldn't exist but which bizarrely seems to be what a lot of people are looking for?!
But there is hope in this fight against the dark forces. A good wizard, fighting the good fight, a beacon of hope, you might say. I wish there was a popular and well known ‘wizard vs dark forces’ story that I could reference but for the sake of this, we’ll call this particularly strong wizard, The Tally Ho, Bouldon.
Maybe this was an unfair test. Maybe it was the utterly glorious sunny day in March. The sort of sunshine that makes me want to invite the entire world to Shropshire. The sort of weather that makes Shropshire puff out its glorious tail feathers, strutting and peacocking across all the land, turning heads, the envy of all the counties. This was the sort of sunny day that would put anyone in the right mood for a proper pub lunch.
The rumours of this wizard's strengths had reached me but they are located in a part of Shropshire that I rarely find myself. So much so that on this particular day, I didn’t even realise I was nearby. When I finally did at midday on a Thursday, looking out of the window of my banged up, old codger mobile, desperately trying to find some signal to check if they serve food on Thursday lunchtimes (only a fool assumes a kitchen is open in this day and age), it was a proper full blown stars aligning feeling. I couldn’t find the signal so I rocked up, utterly delighted that the doors were open.
The delights of this place start from the moment you set eyes on it. There is an essence of old school. A whiff of tradition but all set well within the fresh air of modern comfort. A balance that is so hard to find and so few places manage to execute with such perfection. The outside of the pub looks great.
The interior and bar live up the exterior and hit every expectation but then you walk out the back and into a total crescendo of pure joy. A beer garden like no other. Low hedges with totally undisturbed views of the Shropshire Hills. A tractor looping around the neighbouring field providing some nostalgic and comforting audible pleasure. Old school pub benches, undisturbed grassy areas and a lack of misplaced modern fixings and convenient decking areas that are far too common in pubs these days, adds to the allure. My internal voice only had one thing to say ‘PHWOOOOAAAARRRR’ - this place is the real deal. This is the beacon of light! This is who I’m already backing in the fight against the dark forces!
If you’re in the beer garden, it’s almost impossible to take your eyes off the view but when you do you're met with impossible decisions. A familiarity to the choice of dishes on display. A feel of tradition but all with an air of modern cooking and flavours. It’s all approachable and all sounds so bloody delicious! There's an a la carte menu as well as a set lunch time menu with 2 dishes for £20 or 3 for £25. The sort of offer that lulls me into gorging all 3 courses - totally unnecessary on what was going to be a quick working lunch. There really is something for everyone and to tip my hat to them one more time - plenty of gluten free options!
I’m terrible with most decisions, even worse with delicious sounding ones. A brief look back at the view didn’t do much to help other than distract me once again from the inevitable.
I walked in with fish and chips on my mind so I decided not to muddy the waters. I couldn't look past the Korean chicken bites. ‘Crispy’ ‘Korean’ ‘Peanut’ ‘Pickled’ is a combination of words I defy anyone to simply breeze past without a second look. I had those to ‘start’ but would never admit to this being a lavish two course lunch.
The food was everything I wanted and more. Much like the pub in general. Absolutely packed with authenticity but also comfort, tradition and safe adventure. Made even better when you take into account the pricing. It’s just right and a truly magical combination.
The food is cared for; a rare sight - it’s made fresh in house and it screams everything you want from a pub lunch. The Korean Bites were a tiny bit too sweet for me, or maybe the pickle wasn’t tangy enough but they were succulent, tasty and packed with flavour. This is the sort of thing you should argue the toss over with a pub lunch! A debate I would more than happily enter (if I wasn’t eating alone) by ordering another plate, engulfing those and emphasising my point with a ‘SEE?!’.
The fish was exactly how I would want it, freshly battered, crispy, just the right amount of oily but really well cooked and flaking all over the place. Generous pots of mushy peas and tartare sauce waiting to be poured onto the plate alongside a huge splodge of ketchup to create the condiment version of a neapolitan ice cream. Perfect to swipe some chips all the way through.
The joy of finding a plate of chips with complete individuality. Hand cut, packed with different shapes and sizes, all a beautiful golden brown, fresh out of the fryer, glistening in the sunshine from the vinegar dowsing I’ve just delivered them. Not a single mention of how many times they've been cooked! My kind of chips! I would argue the toss as to whether everything needed an extra pinch of salt but then there was no one to argue with and they performed that forgotten magic trick of leaving salt and pepper on the table so I could clog up my arteries to my heart’s content (or maybe discontent).
There’s personality, uniqueness and authenticity in abundance in this place. Everything the dark overlords of the pub chains are trying to squash. It’s a shining light on what the modern and new country pub lunch should look like. A respectful display of tradition, joyfully essenced with modern twists and turns. A showcase of local produce and booze and all sat at the perfect price. It’s how it should be. It’s a demonstration of what can be done and despite all the hurdles today’s society lays down, it glides gracefully over each one by sticking to its plan and sticking to its identity. An underdog fighting the good fight in comparison to the commercial overlords, like the Sally Gunnell of pubs!
This is a pub that should be lauded, it should be celebrated, it needs to be supported and it must be treasured! If you live in Shropshire, get to know this place. If you’re visiting Shropshire, stick this on your list! Maybe add their sister pub, The Pheasant At Neenton on the list too - it’s shuffled up my priority list considerably since this visit!
Up yours, Dark Overlords…….You’re a wizard, Tally Ho! (and I am behind you 100%)
