Hearty harmonisation

Last week I attended a residents’ meeting in one of my local pubs, the Plough in Heaton Moor, to discuss M&B’s plans for refurbishment and updating the licence conditions. The pub had previously been owned by Orchid Taverns and was acquired by M&B when they took over the company around the turn of the year. Possibly this is something that the conditions oblige them to do but, even so, all credit to them for taking it seriously and letting people air their concerns. Inevitably, some hobby-horses were given an extensive airing, but the general atmosphere was amicable and there wasn’t anything in the licence application that raised serious concern.

One subject that divided opinions was the admission of dogs, although it seems that the pub will remain dog-friendly. Some attendees also expressed disapproval of M&B’s plans to remove Sky Sports, which obviously I would thoroughly applaud. “It’s always busy when City are on,” they said, which I’m sure is true, but rather ignores the counter-argument that, if you’re trying to appeal to diners and families, it may attract the wrong kind of clientele and also deter many from visiting in the first place.

Three and a half years ago, Orchid carried out a modest refurbishment and rebranded the pub as a “Pizza Kitchen & Bar.” Personally, I welcomed this, as it made a refreshing change from the usual formulaic “pub grub”, and the menu offered a number of dishes, not just pizzas, that appealed to me. However, it never seemed to do particularly well (although I generally only visited at lunchtimes) and it was hard to avoid the conclusion that they had rather overestimated how trendy and yuppieish Heaton Moor is. Yes, it’s moving that way, but it’s still far from Didsbury or Chorlton and still has a strong core of established older residents.

M&B said they were going to replace this with a more conventional menu of traditional pub favourites and “hearty dishes”, plus roast dinners on Sundays. This met with the general approval of the meeting, and indeed may well be a more appropriate option for that particular location. However, it’s another example of the tendency for more and more pubs to offer what is, with the odd tweak, basically the same menu. The days when many pubs featured a particular cuisine as a speciality of the house have long gone. And you can’t help thinking that, in these days of street food and ever-increasing interest in dishes from around the world, pubs’ food offer so often looks stodgy and dated.

The company also said they were planning to introduce a wider range of real ales and craft beers, so we’ll see how that turns out. They did, however, breezily dismiss complaints that the beer prices were too high, so we can expect it to remain one of the dearest in the area. Today is the last trading day under the old regime, and it’s scheduled to reopen on Friday 21 August.