We are now into the fourth week of the shortage, and it has made the press. Being “in tears” over the absence of such a mundane item may seem an over-reaction, but if your favourite menu item is missing for a prolonged period you’re entitled to feel annoyed. They’re hardly the most scintillating item on Wetherspoon’s menu, and to my mind are inferior to McDonald’s chicken nuggets. But, as someone who is fussy about food and often divides it simplistically between items I won’t eat and those I will, they fall into the latter category. It’s also unfortunate timing given that Wetherspoon’s have recently been promoting a mix-and-match offer on “Wings, bites and strips”.
Apparently the shortage is due to issues with the supplier. But chicken bites are very much a commodity item, and surely by this time they could have found an alternative source, even just starting on a regional basis. Apparently they are still available in Ireland, including the North, indicating that they are using a different supplier there.The whole episode suggests an uncharacteristic failure of supply chain management.
The Donald will come to the rescue with dirty american chicken that needs to be chlorinated. They'll soon be back ! and even cheaper, I'll bet.
ReplyDeleteHaven't eaten much at spoons, in the 00's a few burgers, later few breakfasts, once or twice a pizza and last Christmas I tested the katsu chicken.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing some yank food products at spoons and on supermarket shelves. A bit of chlorine never hurt anyone but best stay away from seed oils.
It isn't the chlorine that hurts you. It is the bugs that it is masking
DeleteSurely the chlorine at least stuns the bugs, then we can bleach them over here. Let the market decide. I'm willing to give it a whirl. Been to America few times, never got further than Hackensack, New Jersey, got hopelessly lost and wandered the streets for hours before finding a diner or bar the had a beer while waiting for a taxi to get me to the hotel. This was like a walk in a park compared to a bar crawl in Hillbrow Joburg.
DeleteAs I understand it, the trade deal doesn't require us to relax food standards anyway, so the argument about chlorinated chicken is a red herring. And many British people eat chicken in the US and return to tell the tale.
ReplyDeleteDirty chicken never killed anybody. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. A dose of the squits is character building.
Delete1. 90% of US chicken is now cleaned by natural acids such as vinegar.
ReplyDelete2. 100% of bagged salad you buy in the UK has been chlorine washed.
3. If you're buying a whole chicken for under a fiver and you think UK birds are kept in much better sanitary conditions than the US I've a bridge to sell you.
4. Donald Trump eats nothing but burgers and nuggets and he's kicking the world's ass at 78 years of age. He's also never drank alcohol or smoked so he's most likely far healthier than anyone commentating on here.
5. 4 may or may not be true.
Just watching some youtube videos, those southern soul people wash their pork in vinegar before cooking, not just their chicken. Smothered cajun pork chops...I'm hungry now.
DeleteI shall refrain from telling you about the time I ate a large bucket of unfranchised fried chicken and got a bit of a dicky stomach whilst enjoying a delicious pint of cask beer in an award winning CAMRA pub. Curmudgeon tends to delete these stories. Suffice to say the pub dropped out of the CAMRA guide, the pub closed and the manager was left traumatised and unable to work in hospitality again due to a fear of drowning. Tim Martins chicken has never given me the trots and that is to the credit of his fine establishment.
ReplyDeleteAll the 'light bites' we had in a pub near T.Wells, were from the freezer section of Aldi in the very same town! They were advertised as special...
ReplyDeleteGreat pub, but spoiled by a disappointing realisation of where the kit is coming from...
Aldi food wouldn't bother me. I find most of it excellent quality and great value for money. Nor sure you can say the same about some Booker frozen grub. But it shows the huge success of the German discounters that a pub chooses to buy their supplies from there.
DeleteSo anyway me and Mrs PPT did a recce of the area surrounding our upcoming new gaff in Bath one night this week and within about three streets found half a dozen drinking houses we'd be very comfortable in.
ReplyDeleteBut one place stood out as what we think will be our No2 local.
The Bath Cider House is but a short stagger up from the Star Inn.
As you'd expect it's got a fabulous selection of cider - I ended up on some 7.2% monster.
And very studenty. I was the oldest person there by a good 30 years.
And it was rammed at 5pm - they have a fabulous man-made beer garden thing looking out across Bath's Georgian chimneys to the Combe Down hills beyond. There's sport on muted tellies, plenty of shelter for when it pisses and very good pizza on the menu. Oh, and a late licence till 1.30am at weekends.
And then up turns a couple of winsome girls pulling a trolley full of clay, modelling tools and paint which is why all the tables reserved for POTTYMOUTH suddenly made sense. You can Google it.
It's basically an excuse for loads of young people to meet up and hopefully pair off while having fun getting pissed and making shit with clay.
My two lads also confirm it's a great boozer and you'd have to look like Quasimodo not to get your end away.
So, cider, sport, somewhere to enjoy a stogie and lots of pretty young things to ogle at.
Both Mrs PP-T and I were mightily impressed.
Bath is a lovely city with some tremendous pubs, unfortunately run by LibDem nutters.
DeleteBetter than been run by Reform nutters like we are in Derbyshire
DeleteYes don't go anywhere near anywhere run by Lib Dems. They are all bonkers.
DeleteWell it could be worse. Imagine Labour being in control instead of only having a measly seven council seats. You wouldn't be able to move for Turkish barber shops. And the nearest migrant centre is in the shithole called Bristol so the LibDems do know which side their sourdough bread is buttered on. I like to think of Bath Council as old-school hippies rather than those keffiyeh cocks with a ringpull through their nose.
DeleteAnyhow, I know I'm always banging on about Bass not being a patch on its former self but it's only fair to report I had three pints watching the footy yesterday afternoon and they were absolutely delicious. That's me corrected.
Reform have only been in power in Derbyshire for a week. What specific policies have they implemented?
Delete@Prof - so much depends on how a beer is kept. Bass when well kept is great IMV, but all beers are slop if poorly kept.
DeleteI don't normally post these things but I hope Mudgie allows this because although it's not beer related it does mention pubs and it's really very good.
ReplyDeletehttps://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1922010369762971648/vid/avc1/1280x720/v83Ol_y2XAkCQsF5.mp4?tag=14
I was going to give the 5 o' clock club a bit of a swerve tonight because Tuesday night is the Ed Davey night of boozing.
ReplyDeleteBut then another Eddie - the purveyor of all things dodgy Firesticks - Whatsapped me to say The Exeter Brewery's County Best was on the taps and in fine fettle. And I trust that reformed miscreant's beer judgement above all others.
A " beep beep " Road Runner sprint later and I was nose-deep in a fabulously chewy pint or four of 4.6% loveliness.
That's the great thing about Michael Corleone pubs. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
And now we're on the cusp of being halfway through quite a dull week.
As Mrs PP-T often says, we're ‘ar mhuin na muice’.
We're on the pig's back.
When I ran businesses, including a pub, in Ireland I enjoyed the Celtic Tiger boom years and endured the bust years of the economy collapsing and the bailout that ensued.
ReplyDeleteI was lucky over the latter of the two in that I had a bank manager who was a pal I drank with at the local rugby club who warned me privately a week or two before it happened to move whatever I could from my account and ship it abroad as he'd noticed a similar worrying trend amongst certain of his clients connected to a local politician who was a junior government minister at the time. That's how Ireland works even today.
Over the years I developed my own early warning system on a simple premise - people paid cash in the good times and used cheques and bank transfers in the bad because they were borrowing. It never failed although it would be impossible to judge now because everyone uses plastic.
I was thinking about this last night in the pub, which was virtually empty. And Wednesday is cheap steak night too.
And it has been quiet for a number of weeks. Unusually so, despite some really good weather.
And it being a great pub with decent food and good staff.
Now you don't have to be Nostradamus to predict Tracey from Accounts is fucking up the economy. Socialists always do.
But something is most definitely up in the last month or so and it's beginning to snowball.
VE Day last week when pubs could open till 1.30am passed without a whimper. I don't know a single one that stayed open.
With a fallow summer of no major footy events it's going to be an even leaner next few months for pubs.
Mrs PP-T and I had two pints each before heading home.
£22.90.
It's unsustainable.
I go to the big town very seldom nowadays, in the north east, taxi fare back home is around £16 and £22 on Sundays. Every time now if you pay cash it's nicely rounded down.
DeleteThe recent launch of the new Spoons menu seems to have brought chicken bites back in some pubs, although not all.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone can claw broken Britain back from it's decline it is Timbo. In a nation with sky high taxes, rising prices, rampant crime and sectarian violence, where nothing works and the palpable edge of impending civil war looms, Timbo can prove you can still put a cheap pint and a chicken nugget on a pub table. There is one word for what Timbo offers us all. That word is "hope"
Delete