Thursday 18 October 2012

Social cleansing rebuffed

Last year I reported how celebrity chef Marco Pierre White had run into trouble with the locals in his attempt to take the Angel in Lavenham, Suffolk, upmarket.

Now it seems he’s encountered similar problems at the Rainbow in Cooksbridge, East Sussex, and has had to admit defeat.

As part of the relaunch the traditional pub was taken upmarket to look more like a dining room, with dark walls and tables with white tablecloths. It also had a “cosy bar” ripped out to make way for the dining tables.

The menu was changed to include dishes such as poussin à la chipolatas and pomme fondant, and the pub changed its name to Wheeler’s of St James’s at The Rainbow.

However locals were upset that the traditional pub atmosphere had disappeared.

After less than a year of trading the pub’s owners have now parted company with Pierre White and are turning the building back into a traditional pub.

Alf Turnbull, a 67-year-old drinker at the pub, said that locals wanted simple pub food.

“People do not want posh nosh just simple English pub food cooked to a decent standard.

"I could not pronounce half the things on Marco's menu let alone eat them,” said Mr Turnbull.

To be honest, anyone who does things like that to pubs should be strung up from a lamppost by a mob of angry yokels with torches and pitchforks. Only joking, folks...

8 comments:

  1. But.. but, he's a CELEBRITY CHEF! Don't these people realise he knows best?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lord Egbert Nobacon18 October 2012 at 10:06

    He's a Yorkshireman called Pierre.
    'nuff said.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I object, Lord Half-Breakfast! No true Yorkshireman would dream of destroying a proper, traditional pub. That said, alas, there are very few true Yorkshiremen/Yorkshirefolk out there, nowadays who are allowed to have a say in the running of civilization.

    Radical Rodent

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the same arrogant, self-opinionated so-called "celebrity chef" who back in the Spring 2009 edition of CAMRA's Beer magazine, was defending the £4 a pint price of the beers in his Berkshire pub (Yew Tree Inn). He even had the nerve to suggest the price was to low, and had plans to raise it to £5!

    Needless to say CAMRA's pet foodie, Susan Nowak was fawning all over him. Pass the sick bucket!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lord Egbert Nobacon - Marco Pierre White doesn't strike me as your typical Yorkshireman; apart from the arrogance perhaps??

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lord Egbert Nobacon18 October 2012 at 21:40

    @Paul Bailey
    Yorkshire people are like the Scots but with all the goodwill squeezed out of them.
    I've meet him and in the pantheon of monumental prize wankers MPW really is the business.

    ReplyDelete

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