Adieu, St Jude

I'm aware that I've blogged rather a lot about pubs and beer lately, and deviated a bit from my original intention to mix things up by alternately interspersing recipes and restaurant reviews'n'shit here and there, so as to ensure a constant stream of variety.

Well - sadly for those strange folks who aren't at all interested in beer - this is going to be yet another beery one because I heard some rather sad news last night.

The patron saint of lost caus

The St Jude's Brewery Tavern in Ipswich is closing. This Sunday.

And it's one of the best pubs you'll ever find.

It was the undoubted highlight of my last visit to Ipswich just over a year ago - shortly after the place opened - and I feel a bit like I've just lost a relative who I didn't visit as often as I perhaps should've.

A little bit of background: I lived on the west side of Ipswich for many years and moved away in 2009, before the tavern opened. But I was there when St Jude's started brewing, in tiny, quirky, backstreet premises and I got to know the owner/brewer/visionary Frank fairly well. And his appalling jokes. And his excellent beer.

Ironically I first met him in another truly great former pub on the west side of Ipswich - the Rose and Crown - to which he supplied beers like John Orford's Strong Chocolate Malt and St. Mary's Stout. He invited me round to see his brewery the following day and plied me with free beer. That's Frank. Always generous. Always cracking bad jokes.

The closure of the Rose and Crown felt like losing a limb, and the loss of St Jude's will hurt too, even though I don't live locally and thus haven't been able to make it my local. God knows what the regulars must be going through right now. It's ironic that Jude is the patron saint of lost causes.

Located just around the corner from where I once lived, I'd probably never have left the place had it opened while I was still there.

Although in a converted photographer's studio, it's styled after the taverns of old London town.

Wall of beer!

The philosphy is simple: a vast 'wall of beer' on gravity and kitch, gothic decor that makes the place feel like a ghost train or haunted fun house for adults. The staff all know their stuff and there are no handpumps and no keg beer at all.

There is plenty of space for some cracking guest ales in addition to regular beers from the St Jude's brewery and the pub is as friendly as it is quirky. Paradise.

So sad it ends

Unfortunately Frank is now suffering from health problems and the opening of a second St Jude's pub in Felixtowe didn't go as planned, closing just a couple of months after opening, adding financial problems to his health concerns.

Gloriously, Tastelessly Gothic!

The way I see it, Frank got pretty much everything right, which makes it all the more heartbreaking that somehow things haven't worked out. He certainly doesn't deserve this.

Despite being a justified success in it's own right, fate has conspired against the St Jude's brewery tavern, but it's got to be worth one last visit.

I've rearranged my weekend plans to make the trip up to Ipswich for a few beers, and to toast Frank and his wife Colleen who made this dream happen, if only for a short while. 

I might even offer up a prayer to St Jude.

If you're anywhere near the Ipswich area this weekend, I'd strongly recommend doing the same.

There might never be another pub like this! 



NOTE: photos here have been taken from the St Judes Brewery Tavern Facebook group.

Who hates all the pies?

It's strange. By my reckoning I've only been to Manchester about four times in my life, and then generally only fleetingly. 

I'd never before had to spend a night in the city centre - until Tuesday this week, which just so happened to be the evening the riots kicked off there. What are the chances of that?!?

Mrs B-V and I had been watching Coventry City losing pathetically to Bury and were hoping to head back to Manchester city centre on the Metrolink to drown our sorrows, but the police in their infinite wisdom had decided to close the system down. 

Great.

Well done, chaps - while you're advising everyone to stay indoors, you close down transport systems so people who are already out and about can't get back to where they are staying?!? Really sensible, that. 

The Satiety Index

The scare tactics began a few years ago.

‘Traffic lights’ on foods, telling us all, in a bright red, amber or green way, just how bad things were for us. Number of calories, amount of fat, amount of salt, that kind of thing.

Strangely enough there were very few all-green items on sale in the supermarkets, and lots that mixed amber and red, with maybe one token green column. (Ready salted crisps, for example, which score low in sugar and high in everything else.)

I do wonder just how they can accurately calculate exactly how much saturated fat or how many calories is in something anyway?  And does the figure quoted apply to the entire contents of the packet or the amount a person is reasonably expected to eat, disregarding any crumbs or sauce that gets left behind?

(I think an apple (probably all green except in the sugar department) contains about 50 calories, but is that if you eat everything including the core, which I normally don’t? In fact I don’t even usually get close to the core, so I’m probably only eating just over half the mass of the apple)

Anyway, whatever the inherent ambiguities in the system, it has stuck, and now the Food Standards Agency, in its final throes before likely Coalition dissolution, has been actively persuading the food industry to roll out such systems out beyond the chiller cabinet in the house of Sainsbury, extending it to fast food outlets.