Food profile: Keeping diners and drinkers happy

What's the difference between a pub and a restaurant? The answer is obvious - the former welcomes customers looking for just a drink whereas you'd get thrown out of the latter if you didn't order food.

The conundrum for the best food pubs is that as their growing success attracts greater numbers of diners they drift more towards being restaurants and unwelcoming to drinkers. Tables all become laid for food and drinkers find themselves squeezed out, and the transformation from pub to restaurant is sadly complete.

Claude Bosi, owner of the Fox and Grapes - an Enterprise Inns pub in Wimbledon, South West London, knows all too well how clamouring diners can kill a pub. Within a week of opening the doors at the Fox and Grapes in February he found the phone ringing off the hook and the place fully booked out with people eating.

"We got very full straight away and the locals said there was nowhere to sit for a drink. We sorted this out immediately, as the Fox and Grapes is not a restaurant. We separated it into two parts and of the 25 tables we now keep a third for people to drink at," he explains.

Common problem

This is a common problem for many top food-led pubs with reputations for serving great meals, and they approach the problem differently. While many succumb instantly and morph into restaurants, others fight to retain their pub identity.

At the award-winning Three Fishes (part of Ribble Valley Inns), near Whalley in Lancashire, no bookings are taken on the peak days of Saturday and Sunday (except for large parties). Instead customers write their names on a blackboard - a manoeuvre reminiscent of marking your place in the queue for the dartboard or pool table - and wait their turn.

The perennially popular Anchor & Hope in Waterloo, South London, is more extreme in its desire to retain its pub atmosphere and avoids falling into the restaurant trap; it maintains a no-booking policy every day.

A member of its barstaff suggests: "We want to keep it a pub and not a restaurant that has a three-month waiting list. We are extremely busy and it wouldn't be the same if we took bookings and, say, we had just one sitting on Sundays."

This policy can annoy customers who invariably have to 'Anchor' themselves to the bar and 'Hope' for the best in securing a table. But there is no doubt whatsoever that this remains a pub despite the massive demand for its high quality food.

The Anchor & Hope benefited from attracting lots of custom in its early days from the fact that some of its team previously worked at the UK's first gastropub - the Eagle on Farringdon Road, London. Similarly, it is the gold-plated pedigree of Bosi that has made the Fox and Grapes in Wimbledon an instant hit. His 'day job' is proprietor and head chef at Hibiscus restaurant in London's Mayfair where he holds two coveted Michelin stars for his interesting and innovative food which wows many food critics.

Think Royale of parmesan, caramelised walnuts, warm velouté of potato and toasted rice, or maybe choose the hand-dived scallops, pork pie sauce, pink grapefruit and wood sorrel.

Although he has publicly stated that he will retain his full-time role in the kitchen at Hibiscus - leaving the Fox and Grapes food to former Hibiscus sous chef Patrick Leano and day-to-day management to brother Cedric - this has not stopped the early expectation from foodies that he will be creating Hibiscus-style food at the pub.

Old-school favourites

This is a big mistake as the objective is to offer classic English pub food with the likes of sausage and mash, good value steaks, prawn cocktail, pork pie and possibly delicacies such as tripe on the menu.

"People have bad memories of tripe but if you do it well, cooking it for 10 or 12 hours, then it's fantastic," he says, clearly enjoying the prospect of returning such classic old-school dishes to favour.

Chicken Kiev is another classic dish on the menu, but this is not any chicken Kiev as Bosi says "the chicken is from Label Anglais, which is fantastic". This is joined by other dishes such as coq au vin and beef bourguignon that undoubtedly relate more to his French roots than to English cooking.

Bosi is pleased with the pricing at £5.95 to £8 for starters and £12 to £26 for mains and says the skill of the chef with the ingredients helps keep prices at these levels. Even so, many people would still think these a little on the dear side.

But this is the price you pay for ingredients from the best quality suppliers, argues Bosi: "They are all the same suppliers as at Hibiscus (where the eight-course tasting menu comes in at £97.50) whereas pubs often go for cheaper options."

This quality of ingredients is what marks the place out from other gastropubs. Sorry, food-led pubs, as Bosi is no fan of the term and the types of place it references. This stems from his experiences in Ludlow, Shropshire - the previous home of Hibiscus - where he did some consultancy work.

"In one pub there was a sandwich of water cress, banana and raspberry that said 'inspired by Heston Blumenthal' on the menu. This is a million miles away from pubs and their food," he argues.

At another pub he asked where the fryer was and the response from the chef was "there are no chips on the menu as the owner doesn't like the smell of them", which sparks absolute incredulity from Bosi, who cannot imagine a pub not serving chips.

He also expresses horror at the fact some pubs do not open their doors until 11am and are then serving food by 11:30, whereas a kitchen delivering quality food requires many hours of prepping work. So expect to see Leano and his team of five chefs toiling away from very early in the morning at the Fox and Grapes.

Boost for pubs

Although this is a very new experience for Leano, it is well-trodden one for Bosi whose name has been above the door of another pub - the Bell Inn in Ludlow - that he also ran with his brother and which earned a Bib Gourmand rating from Michelin.

He believes the awarding of Michelin ratings to pubs has given the industry a massive boost. "It's been a fantastic thing for pubs over the last 10 years," he says. "It raises the standards and makes people believe in working in pubs. Doing fine dining is not a necessity for chefs to now get stars."

It also highlights that they don't have to work in a place that is devoid of drinkers and Bosi expects drink to account for 40 per cent of the Fox and Grapes total sales. How much of this relates to beer rather than wine we don't yet know but, with Bosi expressing a liking for Black Sheep Bitter and Sharp's Doom Bar, the prospects for beer drinkers seem positive.

And with the pub's re-jigged seating arrangements there should at least be somewhere for the locals to sit and drink their beer before they go home for their dinner - or maybe Bosi will tempt them into grabbing a sausage roll or pickled egg from the bar snacks menu.