More of the customer's view of 1970s pub food

Let's see how our three pub customers reacted to some more questions. Starting with a very early 1970s activity: driving to a country pub.

When you are out driving what prompts you to pick a particular pub for a meal break?
(a) In the summer, I most certainly look for a pub with outside chairs and tables - or perhaps a garden at the rear for customers — so that I can eat drink in the open. In the winter I tend to stop at the cosy pub rather than the imposing hotel type inns. I suppose I must relate the cosiness to home-cooking.

(b) The secluded country pub - better still one by a river. If the car park is well-filled then I am more inclined to stop because the pub must have something, even if it's only an attractive barmaid. The various "meals served-here” signs do help a suppose, but they are not greast enough publicity and so you don't know what standard to expect.

(c) As a matter of fact I usually to a ............. pub if there is one in the area. More often than not they have good and food and are pleasantly decorated. If I am in an area served by them then I go for a country pub which looks as though it has got a history. Because most of my time is spent in town during the week I like to get out of the dirt and grime and never really see town pubs other than at weekday lunch-times. I should imagine they can be pretty lifeless during the day at weekends.
Brewers' Guardian, Volume 99, May 1970, page 56.

As we've been seeing, your chances of getting genuine home-cooking might not have been great. However cosy and traditional the pub might have appeared.

Would people really drive to a pub just because it had a pretty barmaid? Knowing blokes, and especially 1970s blokes, I think that's not only possible, but extremely likely.

Were town pubs really that dead during the day at weekends? That wasn't my experience of pubs in the centre of Leeds. Which would be packed, at least on a Saturday. Sunday was another matter, though. That were scarily dead everywhere. How I hated Sundays.

How do you find the standard of food and cooking in pubs compares with other eating places?
(a) By and large I think they compare very well. The thing is that with the new gadgets for quick-cooking the cleanliness and hygiene of the food can never really be in question, which is quite the reverse to some of the restaurants and cafes I have been in.

 (b) In the lunch-hour they seem to have so much to do in so little time that the quality suffers in some pubs. Things are slightly underdone, spilled, badly served and so on, In one pub I have visited in the past not too much attention was paid to the washing of plates and cutlery.

(c) In my local, both at work and at home, the quality is good if unspectacular. I think that this is probably one of the things which attracts me to the particular pubs I use. Their consistency. In restaurants one can find that the chef will have an “off" day but in pubs with cold snacks and pre-prepared foods which are just heated they seem to be able to eradicate the "human" element to quite a large degree. I have found that in some pubs where the licensee's wife experiments in foreign dishes they don't turn out quite right. Perhaps more attention should be paid to their training if they are going to a pub with a high meals trade.
Brewers' Guardian, Volume 99, May 1970, page 56.

Were pub diners not very critical of the standard of food? Or was it really mostly OK? Mr. c seemed to actually prefer the prepackaged stuff because of its consistency. Which is an interesting take. And probably just as true of some punters today.