Chain pubs - your views?

[arwkrite]

In the main chain pubs work for the magority of people. If it was not so they would not exist.The pubs in my town are all managed or tennanted and you would take them for traditional country style pubs ( if such a thing exists ) housed in old attractive buildings. Beef Chilli or Chicken Curry is as exotic as it gets and thats only if they feel like doing food. The big chains will feed you,here you take your chance. Some allow you too take your dog / cat/ polish fighting bear in, others dont. Try doing that in a Harvester or Wetherspoons.
These days walking into a Banks Barn of a Pub is a rare thing for me. I do not dislike ALL chain pubs , it depends on the individual pub. I have been known to dislike the odd freehouse. Usually this is because of ex Wing Commander type of licencee who does not like a Citroen mixing with the BMW/ Mercedes on his car park. Lowers the tone doncha ya know.

rambling Arwkrite ambles off in search of a bacon sandwich.

[Kake]

Mitchells & Butlers also have a "secret" unbranded brand, the internal name for which appears to be "Castle". We first discovered this via suspiciously-similar menus, then noticed that the pubs in this brand all have websites designed on the same template. A bit of digging on Google revealed a PDF on the M&B website which gave us the Castle name. Partial list of Castle pubs here.

[NickDavies]

They do that. There's another now called Country Pub and Eating House, see for example the Derby Arms in Epsom. They were mostly Vintage Inns, and at one stage they tried to debrand them completely, but the Terms and Conditions link that M&B always put at the bottom of its websites helpfully sent you to a firm called Landmark Leisure, corporate address 27 Fleet St Birmingham. No prizes for guessing who lives there.

When TRG was dumping its Blubecker's brand (see above) the websites had no sign of corporate ownership at all and you had to do a Nominet whois lookup to discover the domain name registrant was Brunning and Price.

[Roz The Oz]

I went to the Chilworth Arms near Southampton tonight, part of the Country Pubs and Eating Houses Chain and was really disappointed - busy gastro pub serving a huge number of covers each day but as they buy in bulk for the whole chain have not got the ability to deal with individual need and not at all interested. I have coeliac disease and was made to feel like a second class citizen as they do not cater at all for a gluten free diet unless it is a food that is already so such as risotto. The others had bread with their starter, not me! The others having cheese and biscuit had that - I was offered just the cheese!
In Dartmoor two weeks ago went to a great pub called the Church House Inn at Holn - they had great local beer and cider and even gluten free chips!!
I know I won't bother with the Chilworth Arms again. Really fed up with this blinkered approach.

[arwkrite]

I have found some hospitals unable to supply specialist diets prescribed by their doctors, what chance have you with pub grub ?
For these special items to be available you will often find the person in charge has a personal interest ,for whatever reason, in supplying them. Perhaps a family member or they themselves suffer from a condition that requires a special diet. I would think the average awareness of dietary problems is quite low when applied to bar and restaurant staff. Much the same on the High street. My town only has one baker making gluten free bread and I believe that is for special order.
Unless you are a fit and normally shaped Human Being you tend to cause problems to others who have difficulty in thinking " outside the box ". I just love that look of puzzlement on their faces.

[Farway]

It's not just pubs that are unable to cope with non bog standard, we went to a big Christmas dinner do in a restaurant, the vegetarian option was normal Christmas platter, but they took the turkey off, cue Meldrew moment of "I don't believe it"

Place long since closed unsurprisingly

[Wittenden]

Welcome to the site, Roz. I'm not coeliac, thankfully, but I do have problems with bread, and know what you mean.Often if I want a quick snack I'm limited to jacket potatoes.Not a real hardship, but damn frustrating.

[NickDavies]

I have found some hospitals unable to supply specialist diets prescribed by their doctors, what chance have you with pub grub ?
For these special items to be available you will often find the person in charge has a personal interest ,for whatever reason, in supplying them. Perhaps a family member or they themselves suffer from a condition that requires a special diet. I would think the average awareness of dietary problems is quite low when applied to bar and restaurant staff. Much the same on the High street. My town only has one baker making gluten free bread and I believe that is for special order.
Unless you are a fit and normally shaped Human Being you tend to cause problems to others who have difficulty in thinking " outside the box ". I just love that look of puzzlement on their faces.

You've little chance of ordering anything sensible "off-menu" anywhere that is set up to assemble factory produced food, which of course goes for all chain pubs as well as all those high street pasta/pizza chains and as you say much institutional catering contracted out to the likes of Compass and Sodexo. There are, of course restaurants in every neighbourhood which provide a wide range of vegetarian choices and where many of the staff don't eat meat themselves. They're called curry houses.