AIBU to find "pub grub" in general to be disappointing and over-priced?

[EmpressJosephine01]

I went out with three friends last night, to a local pub. Same story:
*Pub has restaurant attached;
*Restaurant very nicely decked out and of modern decor - ie restful B&F colour scheme and tasteful ornaments dotted about;
*Extensive menu you see everywhere - a lot of Italian; fish & scampi; steaks; burgers; a little of Indian and ethnic cuisine and the usual suspects on the desert menu.
When the food came, it was so ... average. One friend had ordered roast chicken breast and asked to have extra veg in lieu of the chips offered - and the 'extra veg' turned out to be salad - wait for it - and served with a plate swimming in gravy!
My scampi was ... well I'm not sure if it really is scampi anymore as it didn't taste of much. My chips looked great but tasted as if they'd had some lying around and had simply warmed them up, ie not freshly made.
Sadly, this appears to be the default experience and now meals out seem to cost around £50 for two, am I alone in thinking that dining out is fast becoming a waste of good money?
On the plus side, it did enable the three of us to get together for a good natter without someone having to spend time catering and clearing up.

extensive menu means they have a big freezer and pre-prepared meals.

You can't knock up a curry or a pie to order, either it will have been sitting around hot for hours, or it was frozen and nuked in the microwave.

Spoonies can cook steaks or sausages or fish and chips to order, they do them all day, every day, straight out of the fridge and into the pan. No doubt they are cut and aged in a factory, all the same weight and thickness, so all the kitchen staff have to do is keep the heat setting the same, and use the timer.

Same with carveries, if they cook the same joint time after time, day after day, they should know how to do it. You just have to go at a busy time to avoid anything that's been sitting around under the lamps.

YANBU! Pub food is nearly always disappointing. The chips are those tasteless, thick, woolly ones, and pies are just stews with a lid.

I think part of the problem is that so many independent pubs have joined the big chains and got lumbered with their menus. I would advise keeping an eye out for pubs with good specials boards highlighting seasonal produce hopefully written by a chef who knows how to get the best out of it. I've learnt to be very wary of anywhere that can't tweet dishes. I.e if a chicken breast is wrapped in cheese and bacon and they can't make it cheese free I worry.

I've been to some pubs that serve great food and of course ones that are just let downs, me and OH tend to go to a restaurant when we go out for dinner.

Can you go on TripAdvisor and see the reviews for some places before you go? We have some lovely local pubs near us that do some great food, but also a fair few mediocre places. You can't really generalise.

We go to one pub for food. The interior is dowdy and a bit old fashioned but the food is excellent. It's basic pub grub but very good and not expensive. I like their fish, chips and mushy peas and it's lovely. Not only that but it's the same week in week out.

I like good pub food but it is very hard to find nowadays. Even our Cornish village local is a wanky load of overpriced Asian fusion. I can't stand pubs with ideas above their station. Sometimes you just want reasonably priced bangers and mash.

Our pub serves great food. Small menu and delicious. But not cheap..Fish, chips and mushy peas £14 and a burger £12.50.

YANBU to dislike your local, but YABU to assume it's all pubs - some are amazing!

There's one up in Yorkshire called "the staff of life" which is just amazing. Worth driving all the way up there for the cornflake tart alone. And I don't normally like puddings!

YANBU. I find the same. Never been a great fan of pub food anyway. I like to eat something completely different when I am out to anything I might manage to produce at home.

Living in the West Country we have mostly independent pubs that have brilliant food. Spoilt for choice. Tends to be the big chains that are rubbish. Don't have many here and don't use them anyway.

Don't go to places with enormous menus. It's not viable to do this with fresh ingredients and do it well.

Speciality places tend to be the best ie. Indian where they only do curries and the like, fish place for fish etc.

My 3 tips:

Level your expectations - you won't get fine food in Wetherspoons but I think their curry night is good value and the food is excellent for the price (or it was 6 years ago when I last went).

Use Trip Advisor.

Order intelligently. You're unlikely to get a good nicoise salad in a quiet pub. All day breakfasts are likely to be better (and I know which I'd prefer). In places with low turnover, food is likely to need to be frozen so choose meals which freeze better. Lasagne reheats very well so a chef can make a delicious one weeks in advance.

I love pub grub. Proper hearty food not restaurant /gastropub shite. Spoons or Harvester is fine - you know what to expect, country pubs doing roast dinners etc are brilliant.

I moaned about this kind of thing on AIBU a while ago. And got told I was being unreasonable and was just going to the wrong places! But I agree with you. I think there must be a lot of "wrong places" then.

Its really just frozen food heated up isn't it, except for the very odd place. The days when restaurants cooked their own foods have long gone - except at the most expensive places, and the odd special restaurant dotted here and there.

I remember a couple of decades ago getting cheap, obviously home-made cottage pie in a pub in Manchester over the counter every lunchtime. It was delicious and cheap. Never gonna happen today though [sad little face]

Any pub with a massive menu (especially if its a bit of everything e.g burgers steak curry chicken pasta) is not going to be great food. Average at best.

The best pubs near me have a small menu of great food. Often locally sourced which is also nice.

I find a lot of pubs/restaurants a bit "meh". They can expensive, cheap, chain or independent, good ones seem thin on the ground, I think I've got more jaded as I've got older.

We have four pubs with restaurants attached within about 10 minutes drive of us (built as part of the 'community facilities' within the town's new housing areas), and they all serve very meh food. You need a proper pub, not Hungry Horse shite.

extensive menu means they have a big freezer and pre-prepared meals

This is so true, I remember one of Gordon Ramsey's earliest forays was to a restaurant Where the menu exceeded 10 pages of options. OMG the air turned blue every swear word know to man/woman. GR reduced it to one page. Their takings quadrupled in weeks because the food quality went up and he also got the owners doing a Specials Board. At least the food is freshly prepared, even if in a large amount.

This all played out when DH and I went to a local pub, the menu had at least 50 different options. Hmm we weren't sure whether to walk out, but gave it a try.

I ordered cauliflower cheese. What a sham - it was a couple of florettes of grey looking cauliflower with a packet cheese sauce dumped on top! And it was like bloody Mount Etna, molten lava (aka shoved in the microwave) Well, the air would have turned bluer than GR but I held back.

That's not F#$€@ ing cauliflower cheese!! Last time we went in there!

For every 10 pubs we visit we probably like 1. We're completely starved of decent eateries out West, we tend to stay at home.

Eating out is a rip off, wether it's a sarnie, a bowl of soup or a three course meal.
I'm rarely happy, knowing I could cook better myself and a whole lot cheaper.
I only eat out a few times a year.
I know the above makes me sound like a miserable cow.

Herhighness, that's exactly how we feel. We mostly come away feeeling ripped off and dissatisfied with the quality. The only slight upside is not having to do the washing up but it's a very expensive way around that one [smil]

I find that pub grub is ok of I stick to fish and chips, streak and chips etc, if I forget, see a nice salad or curry and order it, it is always disappointing. Chips is what pubs do best.

Herhighness With you on this.
Most pubs are overpriced and the food is average at best.

eating out is fairly dire but once you get to a certain age its " something to do"
Obvs when not dressing up and playing wild sex games.

There are so many disappointing ones. At the last one visited I ordered sirloin steak, well done (I know, shoot me but if I can cook a juicy, well done steak surely a chef can). The plate put in front of me was swimming in blood so I not unreasonably pointed out that it wasn't well done. Plate removed, returned some time later with the steak cut into half inch strips and cooked to a crisp. No thanks. I would have been embarrassed to put those dried up strips on a plate to serve to anyone, let alone a paying customer. I wouldn't mind but there was this crap on the menu saying something like 'steak just how you like it - cooked to order - rare, medium or well done'. So I ended up with salmon and have struck the pub off the list.