Factory prepared "home cooked" pub food - what a con!

[Smurfy]

A friend of mine used to work in one of those Brewster's places as 'a cook' and was mortified that even their omelettes were frozen!

I once worked in a factory owned by a major egg producer which specialised in making products containing eggs. They used to make omelettes with a conveyor belt oven, and a conveyor belt liquid nitrogen freezer. The finished omelettes were then packaged, boxed and sent to cold storage. Another of their lines was scrambled egg on muffin. The scrambled egg was actually finely diced omelette, and they used a gun type device to squirt some 'scrambled egg' onto each muffin. These were then frozen, packaged, boxed and sent to cold storage. One time my job was to rip open the boxes of products removed from cold storage so that they could be re-boxed in new boxes with a revised use by date.

 

[TheDoctor]

Precisely... surely a chef/cook would understand the mechanics of eating!


and what's all this serve it on a big block of wood (chopping board?) milarky some of the posh out of town pubs are doing? Surely a plate isn't that un trendy?

I'll see your wood and raise you a piece of slate. I mean, what the blistering smeg is that all about? I don't want to eat of a section of my roof!
Anyway - I don't object to Brakes stuff if it's pretty cheap. I'll pay Wetherspoons prices for it, but not restaurant prices.
Anywhere that'll do me a lamb shank in 10 minutes for £6 - there's no way they're doing anything other than warming it up, but a lamb shank would cost me about £3-4 to buy, and then I've got to cook it for a few hours...

 

[Marshmallow_Fluff]

I agree. My expectations at the usual 'pub' type eatery is relatively cheap, quick, relatively edible food. If i want good food, i expect to pay considerably more .
There can be exceptions, our local carvery, which has sadly closed...EXCELLENT food, a full roast with all the trimmings for circa £10, we'd often go there midweek, bet value eatery round here.
At the other end of the scale, the tastiest food i'd had was £80 for two of us, in an upmarket countryside pub.

Its a shame TBF, go back 30 years, many village pubs did home made food, some excellent. But that was 30 years ago, things have moved on, unfortunately. But i think some peoples expectations are too high. What can you expect for £10 ?

A lot more than what I'm getting!! I can have fillet mignon with pepper sauce and pomme frites (hand cut and cooked, not frozen) and roasted veggies to lick your fingers in Paris for 12 euros! To say nothing about what I get for that money in Milan, Stockholm or Athens (all visited the last year)!! Food is seriously overpriced in Britain, I promise you!!

 

[Marshmallow_Fluff]

I once worked in a factory owned by a major egg producer which specialised in making products containing eggs. They used to make omelettes with a conveyor belt oven, and a conveyor belt liquid nitrogen freezer. The finished omelettes were then packaged, boxed and sent to cold storage. Another of their lines was scrambled egg on muffin. The scrambled egg was actually finely diced omelette, and they used a gun type device to squirt some 'scrambled egg' onto each muffin. These were then frozen, packaged, boxed and sent to cold storage. One time my job was to rip open the boxes of products removed from cold storage so that they could be re-boxed in new boxes with a revised use by date.

 

[TheDoctor]

A lot more than what I'm getting!! I can have fillet mignon with pepper sauce and pomme frites (hand cut and cooked, not frozen) and roasted veggies to lick your fingers in Paris for 12 euros! To say nothing about what I get for that money in Milan, Stockholm or Athens (all visited the last year)!! Food is seriously overpriced in Britain, I promise you!!

Ain't that the truth. Just a few weeks ago we got a three-course lunch in a Spanish mountain village, for about 13 euros each. That included wine and coffee.

 

[gbb]

A lot more than what I'm getting!! I can have fillet mignon with pepper sauce and pomme frites (hand cut and cooked, not frozen) and roasted veggies to lick your fingers in Paris for 12 euros! To say nothing about what I get for that money in Milan, Stockholm or Athens (all visited the last year)!! Food is seriously overpriced in Britain, I promise you!!

Oh i know that ...but thats what you get here (generally speaking). To expect anything else is, well, hopefull.
I'm just realistic in what i think i will get for my tenner in the UK.

 

[Smurfy]

You no likey?

Another time they didn't have enough space in the factory proper to prepare the muffins, so we were splitting the muffins in half by hand in a warehouse area*. Several crates of muffins tipped over and rolled all over the dirty floor. I gave the supervisor a 'what should we do?' look, and he just said to put them all back in the crates!

In the interests of politeness, I shall refrain from repeating the story I was told by a TIG welder I met who went to a sausage roll factory to repair equipment.

* The proper food preparation area has all sorts of controls, e.g. you have to wear wellys, and walk through a disinfectant bath

 

[Brandane]

Another time they didn't have enough space in the factory proper to prepare the muffins, so we were splitting the muffins in half by hand in a warehouse area*. Several crates of muffins tipped over and rolled all over the dirty floor. I gave the supervisor a 'what should we do?' look, and he just said to put them all back in the crates! I

A friend of mine used to work in a dairy, many years ago. He still refuses to drink milk .

 

[MontyVeda]

Ain't that the truth. Just a few weeks ago we got a three-course lunch in a Spanish mountain village, for about 13 euros each. That included wine and coffee.

Zilina, Slovakia, 1994... 3 courses for 5 people, two bottles of wine and several pints of lager in a Japanese restaurant... about £20... altogether, not each!

 

[Marshmallow_Fluff]

[QUOTE 2167346, member: 259"]I used to work in an industrial bakery. The rats didn't used to run away. [/quote]

Yes, I know the kind.. They were swimming in yogurt according to a friends experience!

Lovable creatures! lol

 

[EltonFrog]

I was trained as a chef, it baffles me how these food outlets get away with serving the Shiite that they do. All I can think of is it's a bit like crap telly. They serve up cheap crap and they all say oh look people are watching / eating this crap! They must like it, lets make more crap, so they serve up crap, and we all say this is crap, but there's nothing else, so we'll eat/ watch the crap, and they all say look they are all eating/ watching the crap, let's make more crap, and on it goes...


The answer of course is if you don't like crap telly, switch of the telly, and it you don't like crap food boycott the crap food outlets. When everyone stops accepting mediocrity maybe things will improve.

Yours naively

Carlp

 

[vernon]

I'm under no illusion that when I spend a tenner or less on a pub meal that any expectation that it has been fully prepared and cooked on the premises is going to be unfulfilled. Annythin supplied by 3663 (the numerical keypad equivalent of FOOD) and the like is better than anything that was considered to be de rigeur in Berni Inns of the seventies and eighties.

A typical Berni Inn meal, lifted from Wikipedia
A typical menu was of the form:

• Starters: melon boat with maraschino cherry, or prawn cocktail
• Main course: steak, Gammon Steak or plaice with chips, and peas
• Dessert: Black Forest gateau or a choice from the cheese board (Danish Blue, Stilton or Cheddar)
• plus Irish coffee and After Eight mints

I'm not unhappy with what's currently on offer in the likes of Weatherpoons. Equally, I don't choose to make eating in such places a habit.

 

[Brandane]

A typical Berni Inn meal, lifted from Wikipedia
A typical menu was of the form:

• Starters: melon boat with maraschino cherry, or prawn cocktail
• Main course: steak, Gammon Steak or plaice with chips, and peas
• Dessert: Black Forest gateau or a choice from the cheese board (Danish Blue, Stilton or Cheddar)
• plus Irish coffee and After Eight mints

Well if it's good enough for Del Boy........

 

[Night Train]

A friend of mine used to work in a dairy, many years ago. He still refuses to drink milk .

I worked for a day at a dairy (named after the county that Preston is in).
The milk packers would drink from the plastic bottles and then return the part drunk bottles for refilling. They would also pee where they stood in the packing area, due to the cold and the lack of breaks. The floor was swimming in milk and pee which would be followed by the occasional milk fight and hosing down with the steam hose.

I didn't return for the second day, and had to dump my boots and clothes as I couldn't get the smell out.

 

[beastie]

I am a chef in charge of two country pub kitchens. EVERYTHING on my menu's is made fresh by trained chefs apart from the bread. It ain't rocket science. However I do use Brakes to supply me with dry goods, and a brakes wagon pulls up outside the kitchen twice a week. I use local butchers, local veg supplier and buy produce direct from local farms, wherever the quality and price is right. It amazes me that some of my competition can show their faces in public, with the slop they serve.