The Craven Arms, Left Handed Giant Brewpub and Free Trade Inn
Three of the best non-desi pubs I've visited while researching my book
Disclaimer: this newsletter often mentions beer and pubs. You do not have to read this if your life has been affected by substance abuse.
I’d like to thank everyone who donated to my Ko-Fi here last week on hearing about the abuse I suffered. It made a huge difference to my mental health because it showed my efforts are loved by so many wonderful people. I’m very grateful.
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It’s over. All my travels around the country to discover desi pubs in towns, cities and villages have concluded. I’m a bit emotional as you would expect from someone who has spent the past year tasting the finest mixed grills and then trying to come up with more and more synonyms for a ‘huge stack of marinated meat’.
No longer will I be dumped in a field in Northamptonshire and have to wait hours for a rail replacement bus that should have been decommissioned during the Cold War. I now will never witness a man taking laughing gas after news of the monarch’s death broke. Or travel to Peterborough and back, without getting my ticket checked on either journey despite shelling out the equivalent of a weekly food shop. (Thameslink, of course. Also don’t bother switching on the charger sockets, who needs to work on a train?)
But I will miss the first-time food experiences from spam pakoras in Bradford to schezwan mogo in Caterham. I’m already pining for the friends I made and the times I exchanged news of desi publicans I’ve interviewed among their peers.
It’s been an absolute honour and I’m now waving, not drowning, through the sea of copy I have to produce, proof, rewrite and tweak. As someone who loves to work, this is not a hardship - unless you count the RSI, mood swings, gradual diminishing of my eyesight and slow descent into chronic social isolation.
So it’s not a large newsletter this week - nor is it a placeholder - but a chance to look at the things I did around the desi pub visits. This usually involved me trying local beers or visiting pubs people urged me to go to - again it’s sincerely been an honour.
So here’s three experiences that didn’t involve a mixy, spicy platter or sizzler.
Craven Arms, Birmingham
Walking into a pub when they’re opening is a risky business. As the one first through the door you often set the tone for the initial hour of the day unless a group of lads or a Hen Do rocks up, which is unlikely on a Monday morning. Pint. Corner. Keep it simple.
Moments after I arrived a woman came in who the bartender shouldn’t have served - as someone who worked in a locals pub for years you can just tell by the body language. The mistake was on him, though, as he had to put up with a lot of slurred chat and he really didn’t have the experience to close down the conversation. When he hid in the backroom I was the next target but I’m very proficient in making myself look very interested in a painted wall or wooden ornament.
Luckily, here the decor is memorable and really quite retro without feeling forced or kitsch - it reminds me of my favourite refit in London, the Fitrzoy Tavern that can give you a jolt to another age before you remember you’re in a Sam Smith pub, a pub chain run by a dolt from another age. Black Country Ales pubs have this tasteful lounge feel and a superb range of beers, and I’m a real sucker for Fireside.
No matter how evident my enjoyment of my beer and decor is, the subterfuge can only last so long and I’m drawn into the conversation. But it’s OK and I’m in a good mood so I can listen to the woman who shouldn’t have been served and soon I’ve realized I’ve misjudged her. She tells me about her children, the pain of seeing them leave home and I’m plunged into guilt for misreading her.
A landlord once told me that this “body language” judgement we do is very similar to racial profiling and it’s actually refreshing when we’re wrong - and this was the finest example of that genre.
Left Handed Giant Brewpub, Bristol
Despite covering only one pub in Bristol in my book, I visited the city twice because there were a few potential pubs that could’ve been deemed desi that I wanted to check out. This could’ve been done in one visit, admittedly, but at the start of the commission I was a bit more laid back about time concerns then at the end.
It also gave me the chance to go to this taproom twice and have their Dark Mild (twice). It's caramel-y, fruit-y (berries) and dream-y. I had it for a third time this winter at the Southampton Arms above, before lunch. Lucky me.
But I think I’m exaggerating as the biggest draw wasn’t the beer but the bar, which I found to be a perfect example of what a taproom should be like, but is rarely. You should feel like you’re part of the brewery (feel is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, admittedly as it’s an industrial area) but the actual experience has to be comfortable and pleasant. The last two elements are rarities, especially in over-subscribed spaces, such as the Bermondsey Beer Mile.
I took regular tag-along-er Mark Machado here after a desi pub visit in Fishponds. I think after an hour, we got a bit too set in and had to rush to get our train. Another misjudgement of time.
Free Trade Inn, Newcastle
By the end of February, it was getting tense timewise as deadlines drew tighter and pub landlords I’d banked on for interviews continued to be elusive. I knew Gateshead (Soho Tavern) would be easy as I interviewed the family before, but Glasgow? In the end it all was fine and nearly all the people I wanted to speak to ultimately agreed and their shyness was inexplicable as they were very open and truthful.
This left one glorious evening before my train to visit the Free Trade Inn, where I was looking forward to meeting publican Mick Potts. There’s a certain cringe element to travel writing where the temperature of a city is gauged by just one visit to a specific place and I always had this in mind when writing the book. Especially because a lot of my work on desi pubs concerns diversity and it's trite to make comments based on a random count at a random time. The answer was to let those familiar with the pub make these assertions.
Getting Potts to tell me about the city and its love of craft did feel like an actual nuanced insight into Newcastle. He argued eloquently that craft beers (let’s say hazy, juicy IPAs) are more accepted by a wider age range compared to other British cities because there isn’t one family brewer here acting like a custodian over what a beer should be like.
The fierce pride Geordies have of their city came through our conversation and he was almost evangelical as to why it's so great.
As I gazed at the Tyne towards Gateshead and thought of the former mining village I’d visited, I realized how much of this book had opened me up to discovering this country and, especially, its rejuvenation. Despite this renaissance, a lot of people (sometimes I include myself in this) still retained unconscious biases as to what they might be like or how people would act.
The reality is the desi pub I visited summed up the post-industrial landscape with locals grateful their local boozer offered something unique - so much so that people travelled hundreds of miles for the Punjabi-inspired food.
And the most popular dish at the Soho Tavern was a fitting metaphor for this cultural harmony: chilli cheese chips. I told Mick about it and he said: “Stop. Don’t say anymore. I want to go!”