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King’s Lynn beer expert Jeff Hoyle discovers times are changing when it comes to opening and closing




In his weekly The Bar Man column, Jeff Hoyle, discusses late-night dining and the “siren sound of the pub”…

It’s early evening, and our thoughts turn to food, as they often do around this time.

We are up in Lancashire for a week in a cottage with Pete, an old friend from university, and his wife Sue.

Bar Man Jeff Hoyle
Bar Man Jeff Hoyle

The cottage has become an annual tradition since I retired, and over more than a dozen trips, we have eaten out every evening bar three when ‘important’ football games demanded our attention.

In Lancashire, meals are different. Dinner around midday, tea at 5pm and supper before bed, but we hoped just to find a place serving an evening meal, not really caring what it was called.

The first problem was finding a pub that was open.

Friday and Saturday presented no problems, but Sunday in Lancashire seems to be the land of afternoon roasts, with the food service ending at 5pm or so.

Monday was always a day when many pubs closed, and this seems to have spread to Tuesday as well.

On the plus side, it is far easier to check with the internet and use the mobile phone to confirm the information is up to date, provided you can find a signal, less easy in rural Lancashire than in the bustling town of Lynn.

What was a game changer was a website that allowed us to book tables at a specified time and receive immediate confirmation, and I can confirm that we didn’t starve.

We even had some of the emergency cake left at the end of the week.

Our meals during our stay ranged from good to excellent - perhaps a bit pie heavy for some people, but I recall a very appetising Lancashire hotpot and some glorious red cabbage.

More importantly, the beer was uniformly excellent, with the jewel in the crown being a pint of Harlequin from Bolton’s Bank Top brewery.

Noticeable was a trend that seems to have taken hold around here.

People go for food and then leave, with the pub being empty and ready to close after service ends, woe betide you if you fancy a pint at 10pm, a habit my father retained all his life.

Reports suggest that the extended opening hours allowed for events like VE Day and various sporting competitions had little effect on late-night takings in pubs, with the vast majority of custom coming during normal opening times.

Strangely, this move towards earlier eating and drinking is not universal.

I remember going to Barcelona for the rugby league a few years ago and checking into the hotel around 9pm, worried that we might not find anywhere for food.

The Bar Wife was also worried, but in her case, it was that we were too early and the restaurants would not be open, with the locals choosing to eat late in the evening.

It seems that this trend has come to London with reports that a number of upmarket restaurants in the capital are encouraging late-night dining.

Some take bookings up till 10.30pm and places in Soho and Chinatown remain open until 1.30am or even 4am.

A couple at least are offering generous discounts if diners eat after 9.45pm.

Perhaps they are fishing for the customers whose appetites have been stimulated by a pint or two, a condition that I have experienced myself.

Once upon a time, that would have mandated a pie and chips or a kebab, but these days a bit of cheese from the fridge will do the job.

Maybe when you are able to order a cask-conditioned pint of Bank Top, we will stay in, but until then, the siren sound of the pub continues to call.



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