Why we should raise a glass to the rise of the gastropub

SOME say they are harbingers of gentrification – killing off traditional pub culture with their organic steaks and homemade panna cottas.

But gastropubs are unfairly maligned and those who lament the demise of the oldschool boozer are simply hankering after a ‘past society’ says Cambridge University professor and sociologist Christel Lane. She has examined the rise of gourmet pubs in her book From Taverns To Gastropubs, which argues that their emergence in the 1990s was a natural consequence of social changes. ‘Much of the criticism of gastropubs seems to have less to do with what they actually offer, and more with the fact that people miss a past society which is no longer there,’ she said. Critics accuse gastropubs of ruining British pub culture, with one describing them as a ‘restaurant occupying the dead shell of a pub’.

However, Professor Lane said many serve as community social hubs and champion traditional English cooking. And by emphasising dining as well as drinking they are accessible to a wider range of customers – especially women. ‘Women were once almost completely excluded from pubs,’ Professor Lane said. ‘Now they are a target market. The rise of the gastropub does not just mean a culture has been lost; something has been gained.’