The fate of community restaurants in your town, pineapple colonialists, and can an izakaya survive in Somerset just this once?
Food news pertaining to Somerset and beyond
Hello, it’s that time of the month again where I deliver you various bits of food-relevant news, goings on, and scuttlebutt.
As per usual, free subs get a preview, while paid subs are party to the whole tea.
Let’s get on with it then:
I’ve recently given the WFJ’s guide to Somerset restaurants a summer spruce, with the inclusion of one new restaurant, updates on menus, and some more good-to-know info (such as ‘must order’ dishes) on each entry. The local’s guide on where to eat in Frome is also now back up to date.
What happened to the popular state-supported community restaurant in your town? 85 years ago, after the outbreak of WW2, Churchill and the Ministry of Food mandated the rollout of state-subsidised ‘British Restaurants’. These were where you rubbed shoulders with friends, family, and neighbours, and ate from a simple menu of things like fish pie, toad in the hole, roast beef, Irish stew, rice pudding with jam, and gooseberry tart with custard. Seeing as the importance at the time was on keeping communities – and the nation at large – together, in good morale, and in good health, these days a growing number of similar concepts, such as The Long Table, Public Diners, and Canteen ask: why not that, but now?
Anyway, when a friend offered me his login and password to the British Newspaper Archive, the first thing I did was look up what successes, if any, British Restaurants of the 1940s had in Somerset. Bearing in mind these were more numerous than branches of McDonald’s today, and genuinely frequented by people from all walks of life, but died out post-war mostly via the indignation of private restaurant owners.
Here’s what I’ve found so far, after several hours scanning black-on-brown 12pt serif: