Back in the late sixties, in Liverpool, steak bars ruled as a post-pub-crawl destination (at the end of the month, payday was always celebrated, where I worked, with a pub crawl). There were the ubiquitous Berni Inns, just a tad proletarian, but their battered plaice was seriously good, and in our local branch, the bar staff were seriously hot. Add good beer (yes,really, even in chose days, when keg was all you could get!), and we had all we needed.
The evenings would invariably start at Walkers Old Style House (long gone), in Chapel Street, an apparently Victorian pub of surpassing charmlessness, for which those of us who didn’t have to go home first, or work late, invariably headed.
The drink of choice was Double Diamond, mainly because it wasn’t actively offensive, though the pub still offered a selection of hand-pulled beers which were offensive, and best avoided. So “Ten pints of Diamond please!”, would always elicit the same response from the surly fuck behind the bar “Oh god, ten pints of shite…” Yep, all the charm for which the breed was renowned – trust me, scousers aren’t really the merrilly-quipping, salt of the earth types of popular myth. Not then, not now. Guys like this can be found in many pubs, even today.
Once armed with our beer, it was time to take on board some ballast. Those days pub menus were very simply – pies and/or sandwiches. In the Style House, as it was universally known, you could have mystery-meat pies with beans, or without, depending on how ant-social you were feeling. Ordering these, too, would bring forth a barrage of grumbling from behind the bar, despite the fact that we were (a) usually the only customers, and (b) spending a substantial amount in the time we were there – pubs closer to the buses and trains got the going-home trade – he’d always bitch and whine. He never tired of it, and we never tired of winding him up. And knicking the ashstrays! Hell, pinching ashtrays – and glasses, when special editions were produced – was a local sport. Over the next hour, the late comers would turn up, usually to be greeted with cries of “Just in time – it’s your round!” Well, it worked sometimes…
And so the evening would go, wandering between pubs, fortified with pies and, just occasionally, pickled eggs, to soak up the beer. Or, unfortunately, coat some poor sod’s shoes as it all got too much for him! Here’s a tip – never wear suede shoes on a pub crawl!
Eventually, in varying degrees of inebriation, we’d pitch up at Berni’s – usually the one in Exchange Street East – and, just for the novelty value, we’d hit the bar there, too. And here’s another tip – when you’re six pints in the bag, it’s never a good idea to get drawn into a yard-of-ale contest, it can only end in one way…
As I said, Berni’s was our default destination, but a tad more “sophisticated” was Flynn’s Steak Bar, a few minutes away in Old Hall Street. Its main claim to sophistication was its darkness – often so gloomy it was hard to know what you were eating (and, sometimes, why), and its higher prices, but the food was mostly good (good plaice, just like Berni’s – I almost always had battered fish – it’s hard to cock it up), and the service very efficient (whereas Berni’s sucked, so much so that one night when the staff had vanished, seemingly from the face of the earth, we got so fed up waiting for the bill we walked out when banging on the table had failed to bring anyone out from the bowels of the place). Flynn’s also had a decent wine list, which was an occasional attraction when there were just a few of us, but we mostly stuck to Berni’s, which was close to a taxi rank, and the station, too.
There was another upside to steak bars – the “bar” in the title. In foul weather, something to which Liverpool was no stranger in those days (we just don’t get the extremes of weather now that we did then), you could happily spend the evening in the Berni’s in Exchange Street East, as they had several bars and, a quick sprint through the rain away, a decent pub just across the road for a change of view (forgotten its name, I’m afraid). So, it was possible to spend the entire evening in Berni’s (Flynn’s didn’t have a bar, as far as I can recall), without getting bored. I mean, they had booze and food, what’s to be bored about? We could also book our meals, secure in the knowledge that we’d actually be able to guarantee turning up on time, whereas normally we’d have to take pot luck – not always a success with a party of 20 or more.
By now, you may be wondering why this is called Not so hot… I know I am. Anyway, I started out with the intention of talking about mustard, something which featured quite prominently in steak bars (to take the taste away, maybe!). On the odd occasions when I’d have steak, I’d always plump for the dark brown, slightly spicy “French” mustard – in reality, probably Bordeaux mustard, and I loved the stuff, not then having developed a taste for the rather one-dimensional English version. And, working not far from a deli, I could buy it in jars to use at home. Then I went to work elsewhere, miles from the city centre, so I opted out of the pub crawls, stopped eating at Berni’s or Flynn’s, and couldn’t buy Bordeaux mustard anywhere, and so it dropped out of my life. Until now.
Last week, I was very pleased to see that Sainsbury’s were stocking it, under their own brand. That should have warned me.
It looks like the same stuff, smells like it, but it all falls to pieces when it comes to the taste. Perhaps I should have had the sense to read the label, as it seems to me that many products with Sainsbury’s name on the label merely mimic what they claim to be. For example, there’s not the slightest hint of the grape must, with which it should be made, and which contributes greatly to its taste and colour. Instead, it’s coloured with ammonium caramel – doesn’t that sound just yummy, and the flavour pumped up with ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, a mix perhaps more suited to curry. Ah well…
Footnote: a search for Bordeaux, or brown French, mustard came up blank – it’s very hard to find. Waitrose have it, called simply, as it always was, French Mustard, but whether it’s any more authentic than Sainsbury’s offering, I can’t say.
