Pub Reporter

I'm always surprised at how people see pubs. I have a British background, so they're part of my cultural heritage. But I thought that even the most myopically North American had the basic idea: it's like a bar, but built around taking, eating and drinking, rather than dancing, dating and drinking. It's more classic than modern, they have food you've never heard of, and fries are called chips.

And yet, people throw the name around to mean pretty much anything. In university, I wrote an article for the math students' newsletter lampooning the university's food services for listing gyros under the heading "pub grub". That lead to someone writing a snarky letter pointing out that the university's pub served gyros. That didn't seem like much of a justification, since that establishment didn't seem very pub-like either.  Yes, I know I'm sort-of committing the True Scotsman Fallacy, but I don't think that a place University students go to get drunk is an exemplar of pub culture.

And now Chunky soup has a line of "pub inspired" soups. I'm sure they have soup at pubs, but it's not the first thing you associate with them. A quick search for "pub food" seems to confirm that in most pubs, the favourite soup is not Chunky, but Guinness.

And the flavours don't even pretend to fit pub culture. Alehouse Shepherd’s Pie is fine, but Blazin' Roadhouse Chili-Style? Chipotle Sirloin Burger? Meatball Bustin’ Sausage Rigatoni? And stranger, they're marketing these soups as an antidote for emasculation. There seems to be a big market for products that help men convince themselves they are men, but Chunky seems to be stretching it. Also, pubs don't seem like centres of masculinity, at least on this side of the Atlantic. And soups aren't real masculine as foods go. It seems like marketers drew topics out of a hat and thought they could associate them together through sheer repetition.