David Butterfield

10 commandments for the public house

  • From Spectator Life
The Sherlock Holmes pub in London (iStock)

Good beer in good company. What could be better? But, as delightful and simple as that scenario is, it’s phenomenally easy to bugger up a good pub. There’s less agreement, however, about what the perfect pub should look like. Back in 1946, George Orwell set out in his classic article, The Moon Under Water, 10 essential features of his ideal pub: since he knew of nowhere that satisfied all of them, his Moon Under Water had to be a wonderful fiction. Some 70 years down the line, many pubs in search of perfection are fiddling with minute details or pointless frippery. For me, once the basics are sorted, it’s all a case of what not to do. So here are my 10 simple commandments to keep the perfect pub perfect.

1. Don’t be pretentious. If you serve good beer, well done. But let’s spare the round of mutual high-fives: this is a duty, not a virtue. As to other drinks, the simpler the better: I don’t want a tiny ‘craft’ beer in a can, I don’t want a cocktail that takes 10 minutes to make, and I don’t want a first-growth claret (well, I do, but not here).

2. Don’t serve food that takes more than six words to describe. ‘Sausage and mash’ good, ‘Steak and chips’ fine, ‘Cornish lamb cutlets, pulled Lamb croquettes, spring greens and hazelnuts in a juniper & port jus’, no. If you do want to go full-on in the food stakes, feel free to put your focaccia on some slate, your chips in a baby bucket, and your condiments in a reclaimed watering can. But you have now mutated into a ‘gastropub’. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that the lexicographers would call this grotesque portmanteau – public stomach – a ‘nonce word’.)

3. Don’t change your name.

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