Sunday in South Wales

Posted on 2010/09/17 22:52:35 (September 2010).

[Sunday 5th September 2010]
Spent the day with Vera and Robin in South Wales.

Had the (now traditional) Sunday lunch at the Bear in Crickhowell. It's usually always good here, although today I have to admit to being a bit disappointed - not with the quality of the food, but just with what the vegetarian option actually was. I'm always a bit baffled by this, when pubs have a Sunday lunch menu, there's absolutely no question that for meat eaters it's going to be some kind of roast meat, often more than one choice, and if it's beef there's going to be a Yorkshire pudding, if it's chicken there's going to be stuffing, if it's pork there's going to be apple sauce, and no matter what it is there will be roast potatoes, gravy and all the other usual trimmings. People go to pubs for Sunday lunch because they want this kind of comforting traditional food - they don't want to be surprised with something exotic and unusual. If there was, let's say, a prawn curry on there, no-one would order it would they? Why then, is the vegetarian option more often than not something which seems to have no place whatsoever on a bill of British fare, or indeed on a table for Sunday lunch? I like pasta, I like curry, I like a stir-fry now and again, and I can even sometimes almost enjoy the ubiquitous pub vegetable lasagne, but I don't want any of these things for Sunday lunch. Today's vegetarian option for Sunday lunch was something involving cous cous, artichokes and goat's cheese. After yesterday's wonderful proper pub food at the Boat, I just couldn't bring myself to eat this.

If any pub proprietors happen to be reading, let me suggest some things that would be a good vegetarian option for Sunday lunch. All of these are to be served with roast potatoes, gravy, and vegetables - we wouldn't object to Yorkshire puddings either (no, the world won't end if they're not served with beef): mushroom and ale pie or mushrooms en croute, toad in the hole with vegetarian sausages, a vegetable pasty, pan hagarty, homity pie, cauliflower (or cauliflower+broccoli) cheese (only if it's really well made though), a roulade made with sage and onion stuffing and spinach, some kind of bean stew (e.g. dried broad beans stewed in cider), or even the mockery inducing nut roast, if done well.

Anyhow, after lunch Robin took us to visit the gardens of a house, embarrassingly whose name I've forgotten, and we had a pleasant stroll around there for a bit. Spent the rest of the day back at Vera and Robin's house, with the exception of a brief foray out in the car to drive to the top of a very misty Blorenge (small mountain near Abergavenny).

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