A tale of two boozers

It so happened that we took both our midday and evening meals in public houses yesterday: in my case a ham sandwich in the 'Boathouse' between Ryde and Seaview and a portion of lasagne in the Wetherspoon's in Union Street in Ryde. What follows is some thoughts arising from our patronage of these two rather different establishments.

Both meals cost around £7.50 a head, although that at Wetherspoon's could have included a free drink, had I worked out that one was available. Both came on round plates and both came with salad.

Wetherspoon's rather busier in the evening than the Boathouse had been at lunchtime. More boozers in the former, but more dogs in the latter. Former public bar, latter saloon bar.

The ham sandwich

Rather a posh looking sandwich, posh enough to have a salad only lightly dressed, with pink coleslaw and without crisps of any sort. So salad good.

Bread was rather better than is usual in such establishments, sliced from a bloomer of some sort, which may have come from a proper commercial baker. Ham looked OK, but had been cut rather thick and liberally dosed with apple chutney. This last was a good deal better than Branston's, which I do not like at all, but which meant that one could barely taste the ham. Furthermore, the sandwich was fat enough to be rather heavy going and I did much better with the second half eating the top and bottoms slices separately, there being quite enough ham to cover both. And if there is a next time, I shall ask for the chutney on the side.

Served in a near private side room, which suited very well on this occasion. Taken with sparkling water.

The Boathouse is part of a three house chain. 'An inn of distinction'.

The portion of lasagne

Looked much better in real life than it does in this flash assisted snap. The salad was simple and unpretentious, served with dressing on the side, a plus for me as I generally prefer salad without. So salad good again, albeit in a different way.

Lasagne entirely satisfactory. We speculated about how it might have arrived on the premises, with my voting for frozen portions coming in boxes of dozens or whatever. Heat up in microwave and slide out of bag onto plate. But the lasagne survived this treatment very well and I enjoyed it more than I had enjoyed the ham sandwich, although it did have the advantage of coming with a coup de blanc (Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc from the Antipodes).

One portion of oven chips for the two of us was plenty. BH explained that the trick with these chips was to coat them with flavoured semolina before cooking them, semolina being very absorbant stuff, which meant you could pack lots of flavours in. Flavours which were supposed to make up for their being oven chips rather than real chips.

We also speculated on the fact that while Wetherspoon's is now a very big chain, one never sees Wetherspoon's trucks. They must get all their suppliers to deliver direct to their houses, rather than operating their own distribution depots - no doubt some management type has thought long and hard about all this. My subsequent attempt on my telephone to find out about ready made lasagne portions which might suit Wetherspoon's failed completely: I was able to find a number of outfits which were into ready meals, but none of them were up for supplying any details to my telephone. To be investigated in slower time. Further speculations about the sort of reception that would be put on for the visits of the buyer from Wetherspoon's. Bigger and better than that put on for the buyers from Waitrose or Tesco? Or do restaurants not use the same suppliers as shops?

The Wetherspoon's menu, presumably a nationwide thing, managed a short paragraph about the origins of this particular establishment, once a fancy shop and taken over by Wetherspoon's after a fire. A shop with the gunmetal shop window frames still sported by a number of the shops in this once posh street. And, in this case, with cylindrically curved glass at the corners, visible left in the illustration taken from gmaps streetview below, not something that shops of today would run to.

S Fowler & Co.

I had thought that Ryde was a patriotic town, very hot on whichever royal had made in fashionable back in the first half of the nineteenth century and that Union Street was named for the union of England and Scotland. In the margins of this outing, I learned that this was quite wrong and that it was named for the union of the villages of Upper and Lower Ryde, which this rather steep street joined together. I must now investigate the origins of the union streets of London and Plymouth. This last being the merest shadow of what it once was.

The shelter

The rather grand shelter provided for the young people who were too young to be let into Wetherspoon's or who were too short of funds. Sometimes quite busy, and we did not have the nerve to find out what they were busy about.

Reference 1: http://www.theboathouseiow.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/isle-of-wight/s-fowler--co-ryde.