Scratchings, Cobs and the Case for Keeping It Simple at the Bar

There's a moment, somewhere around half four on a Saturday, when a pub shows you what it is. The door goes, a familiar face comes in out of the drizzle, and the first question isn't about the menu. It's about the bar. What's in the bowl? What's under the glass dome? Is there a cob worth the bother, or a bag of ready-salted doing the honours?

At The Leopard we've long held that what sits on the bar top says more about a pub than any laminated starter list. A snack isn't a prelude to the main event. Eaten standing up, with a pint sweating gently beside it and half a conversation going on behind you, it is the main event.

In defence of eating standing up

A sit-down meal has its place. Sunday lunches, birthdays, the long unhurried afternoon that turns into evening without anyone quite deciding it should. But there's another sort of hunger entirely — the small, salt-driven appetite that arrives with the first pint and wants answering quickly, cheaply, and without anybody producing a clipboard.

Bar snacks are honest in a way menus often aren't. No garnish, no drizzle, no description running to three clauses. A pickled egg is a pickled egg, and it has been getting pubs out of awkward silences for a century and a half.

They're social, too. You can't really share a starter without a certain formality creeping in. You can absolutely share a bag of scratchings with a stranger, and in Burslem you probably will.

Nine things that belong beside a pint

Pork scratchings. The king, and no argument entertained. Big, pale, aggressively crunchy, with just enough give in the middle to remind you they came off a pig. If your teeth aren't slightly worried, they're not fresh. Paper bag over foil, always.

With: a session bitter — something around 3.8%, malty, not trying to prove anything to anyone.

Pickled eggs. The great divider. Cold, on a little plate if you're lucky, speared on a fork if you're not. The vinegar should make you sit up. Most people who claim not to like pickled eggs have only ever had a bad one.

With: a golden ale. The sharpness cuts clean through and makes the next mouthful of beer taste like the first.

The cheese cob. A white cob, properly buttered, filled with a decent crumbly Staffordshire cheese and — if we're being serious — a smear of chutney or a slice of onion. Nothing else. The bread should be fresh enough to leave flour on your fingers.

With: a pale ale, or a mild if there's one on. Mild and cheese is one of the great unsung marriages of the English pub.

A pork pie. Not a slice of one. A pie. Cold, hand-raised, jelly doing its job, pastry with a bit of structural integrity about it. Cut it in half only if you're being polite.

With: a stout or a dark mild. Something with a bit of roast to it.

Oatcakes. Yes, the Staffordshire ones — soft, yeasty, sold in a stack, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the Scottish biscuit. Folded, warmed through, with a bit of cheese inside if the kitchen's in a good mood. This is the snack that tells visitors they've crossed a border.

With: a best bitter. Nothing fancy required.

Black pudding. Sliced thick, warmed, served on a bit of bread or a barm. Ignore anyone who calls it a breakfast food. It's a pint food and always has been.

With: a dark ale, ideally one with a suggestion of smoke about it.

Dripping toast. Beef dripping, hot toast, salt. That's the recipe. Cheapest thing on this list and possibly the best, and it has the useful quality of making a second pint feel like a sensible idea rather than a character flaw.

With: a winter warmer, or a porter, or frankly whatever's on and dark.

The scotch egg. The test of any bar top. Fridge-cold with a grey ring round the yolk and you walk on. Properly made, with a bit of give in the sausage meat, and you buy two before somebody else does.

With: an IPA. Hoppy and peppery get on very well indeed.

Pickled onions and gherkins. The quiet workers. Nobody orders them first; everybody's glad when they arrive. A jar with a fork standing in it is a public service.

With: anything at all. That's rather the point.

Where the good stuff comes from

None of this needs a supplier list as long as your arm, but it does need suppliers who care. Burslem Market on a Saturday morning remains the best starting point in the town — the cheese stall, the butcher's counter, the people who'll tell you honestly whether the eggs are worth bothering with this week.

We lean on the same handful of local sources we always have: a butcher who knows what a hand-raised pie should look like, a cheesemonger who'll cut a cob-sized wedge without being asked twice, and the oatcake shop that's been doing the same thing since before any of us were born. That isn't nostalgia for its own sake. It's just good buying.

The bowl of crisps is not the enemy

None of this is a sneer at a bag of crisps. There is a time and a place, and that time is ten past ten on a Thursday. But a pub that offers only crisps has made a decision, and the decision is that the bar isn't worth thinking about.

We think it is. The bar top is the first thing you see and the last thing you lean on. It ought to have something on it worth leaning towards.

So come in, order a pint, point at something under the dome and ask what it is. That's how it's meant to work.