Anger at 'gastro' term ban

Guide consultant editor Elizabeth Carter told the Publican’s Morning Advertiser that the term had become a cliché and “diluted” by large pub chains adopting it and supermarket “gastropub” ready meals.

Pascal Watkins of the Angel at Hetton, North Yorkshire, is the son of Denis, who passed away in 2004. Denis took on the pub in 1983 and turned it into a venue with great food and great ales. Denis Watkins is often cited along with the Eagle in Farringdon’s Michael Belben as starting the gastropub movement.

“In the past seven years since my father died, I am very proud of the way the press wrote about him,” said Pascal Watkins. “He caused a cultural revolution in the Yorkshire Dales and we still tell our new visitors that we run a pioneering gastropub.

“To find out that the Good Food Guide is doing away with the whole concept of the gastropub feels like an insult to a very proud heritage.

“I think it is a huge insult to my late father for all the hard work he put into transforming the face of pub catering 25 years ago.”
Carter said that it was out of respect to the founding fathers of the gastropub that the term will no longer appear in the guides, citing Denis Watkins, Steven Doherty of the Punchbowl, Crosthwaite, Cumbria, and Michael Belben of the Eagle in Farringdon, London, as those instrumental in the movement.

“The word has been devalued through overuse and its assimilation into chain restaurants. At the Good Food Guide we feel the term no longer does credit to the leading lights of the movement from the early days, or the many pubs and inns with outstanding hospitality that offer fantastic food and great service today.”