Let’s talk about bar snacks, and how cheese and onion crisps are satan’s work.

Seriously, Cheese ‘n’ Onion, Ready Salted, Salt ‘n’ Vinegar, or if you want a taste of the exotic… Prawn Cocktail. These are the reason why bar snacks are so awfully bad.

It’s not like landlords and ladies throughout the country thought “You know what, let’s just serve something so incredibly tasteless but full of salt.”  It took time, ennui, boredom, freedom from the kitchen slavery. I think ennui is probably the biggest player here. But there’s definitely an argument to be made for packets of crisps being the reason why bar snacks in the UK are so tiresomely awful.

Right, now that’s out of the way, let’s take a step back.
I remember the pub “snacks” of my youth. Those years spent in working men’s and factory clubs (no-one seems to mention factory clubs when they’re talking about clubs), those (cigarette smoke) hazy evenings (and late nights if my parents were having fun) where me and my brother were sat down with a mixer bottle of cola (Coke was too posh for these places!) and told to behave while my parents danced the night away, or if the music wasn’t to their liking my mother would be ladying (why do we get “lording” it and not “ladying” it?) over the ‘mother’s meeting’ and my dad would be hustling at the dart board (never play against someone who learned darts on a Navy ship!). But there we were my brother and me, sat watching our little corner of the world go by, clasping our bottles and trying as best we could to make them last.
The highlight of the night, every night was when the Winkle Man arrived, the strap of his tray slung over his neck, and the ice bedded stench balancing on his gut. To the 8-year-old me it reeked. Absolutely stank. I’ve never been a fan of fish at the best of times, but the cockles, muscles, winkles and shrimp being touted around the hot and steamy club bore the sort of aroma that would in these times see Environmental Health on your doorstep quicker than you could lock the door and pretend to be out.

My parents, knowing my views on seafood even though I was still only young would go out of their way… to make me try some. Every weekend. And every weekend I’d run the risk of spending the rest of the evening worrying that I’d got food poisoning with that first, single and solitary bite of utter slimy disgustingness. My dad on the other hand would wolf down the content of a little paper cup of everything the Winkle Man had to offer; he was ex-Navy after all and could have lived on seafood – of any quality.

But I was lucky, for one of my parents friends well knew the torment of awful bar snacks and as soon as the Winkle Man left and my parents were back on the dance floor embarrassing their children in a way that only parents can do, he’d wave me over to the bar and we’d start on the pickled eggs, the gherkins, the something I can only hope were sausages in brine. He’d reach into the recesses of his hefty jacket (it was sweltering and sweaty in that club, but I also remember him wearing what can only be described as a cross between a donkey jacket and a poachers jacket – and it really wouldn’t have surprised me to learn the gent was indeed a poacher. What he poached for in a city I’d really rather not think about, but I’ve probably knowingly eaten worse. But he’d reach in and bring out a bottle of some sauce or other.

I remember trying my first hot sauce, amongst others, while I was still in primary school.  Those evenings in those clubs I started my love affair with bar snacks. And when I started secondary school I was allowed “sips” of beer and with a few of the other bar flies I started on my journey of matching those snacks with beer and cider, and occasionally something that was passing as wine. Blue Nun goes very well with winkles, you don’t want to swallow either of them.

Bringing the ramble back though, bar snacks used to be varied. There were many varieties of pickled eggs, there was pork scratchings and crackling. There were jars of different sorts of nuts (salted, old salted, something going cheap at the local multi-cultural supermarket), there was Bombay Mix, and then there were the rolls.
We’re a little too east for cobs, too north for baps and too south for barms, we just had rolls. But the exotic fillings made a young boy drool. Ham with *mustard*, salad (lettuce and tomato) with *salad* *cream*, and the local favourites of cheese and ketchup (don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it), ham and marg, and if the landlord was feeling posh, there’d be a range with “potted meat”. If you want to know what that was, search for “meat paste” because “potted meat” was putting on airs and graces. If Trading Standard existed back then as it does now, they’d have shut the place down there and then!

As I grew older and started going out drinking on my own, the bar snacks changed. No more the nightmare fodder of the Winkle Man, no more the nameless meat paste, but instead onion bhajis, chakli, samosas, spiced peas and nuts, naan’s to share and chutneys to blow your head off! There’s a lot to be said for Peterborough, almost none of it positive, but while I was growing up here it was one of the best cultural melting pots you could ever hope to find. Sitting at the bar in a back street boozer with decent ales on cask, decent(ish) lagers on keg, and homemade exotic snacks while you drank, the distraction of reaching for the small pot of nibbles rather than the pint pot keeping your drinking speed in check.

But all of these wonderful bar snacks take effort to make, and now thankfully a lot of them also require refrigeration ( I just know – and hope – the Winkle Man is spinning in his grave, or more likely being spit-roasted in hell (read into that whatever your dirty little minds will ;¬) )). And it’s far easier to just get in a few boxes of crisps. They come from the cash ’n’ carry,  they can (legally) just sit on the back of the bar, or on a shelf under it. They don’t need to be thrown out when they’ve taken on a life of their own and hosting their own naming ceremonies. They’re easier.

But they’re boring.

Salt ‘n’ Vinegar, Cheese ‘n’ Onion, Ready Salted. How bland are they? We know they’re boring and bland, that’s why there’s countless blogs about Scampi Fries where people subconsciously desire the botulism retching nostalgia of the Winkle Man, of Bacon Fries or Frazzles depending on the sort of estate you grew up in and the amount of posh and exotic you’re craving.

Let’s also not forget Monster Munch, Quavers and if we’re lucky Space Invaders to really lean into the retro kick of the yoof.

Easy, Boring, Dull: Crisps.

Don’t get me wrong, a packet of Torres Black Truffle crisps and a pint of Runaway Stone’s Throw in Café Beermoth in Manchester is my idea of a perfect early afternoon beer and food matching. But there’s so very much more that could be done.
We’ve never really properly got into charcuterie in the UK, and being blunt our range of cheeses aren’t great for snacking on. Okay, I may be being unfair there because I don’t like cheese, so it’s not just the UK cheeses, it’s cheese.

But surely we should have better than two pints of lager and a packet of crisps?

We’ve got the bars that specialise in high quality beers, ciders and wines, so why not provide the bar snack that match those? The snacks that don’t come in foil sealed packets with shelf lives longer than the beer you’re drinking?

So yeah, I’m blaming the convenience of crisps to the dire state of bar snacks.

Except for those pubs that also sell chocolate, you guys rock!