Pub Food

I'm not sure about its provenance or authenticity; but when it's available, I prefer a Steak and Guinness Pie to the ubiquitous Shepherd's Pie.

^ two totally different things.

Pub food is the British equivalent of American bar food, but less focus on sharing snacks (wings & skins) and more on fairly hearty but simple individual dishes.

Typical pub food:

Fish & Chips
Sausage & Mash
Pies
Ploughman's Lunch
Roasts (on a Sunday)
A basic steak
etc...

These days there has been an influx of the "gastro" pub. Chefs trying to step up the pub game to a good restaurant level. Some do it well, most fail miserably.

K

Bubble and Squeak
Australian meat pies

Cornish Pasty. I don't know if this is a regular item on pub menus, but it's what I have if I visit the King's Head in Santa Monica.

Pub food is a pretty wide church - like any bars they run from crappy dive up to very expensive so the food you get can be microwaved in the back or it can be prepared by a Michelin star chef, so obviously what you get depends but some dishes are fairly ubiquitous:

Bangers (sausages) and mash
Fish and Chips
Ploughman's lunch (basically pickle, cheese some bread and various bits and bobs)
Pie of some kind (steak and ale/kidney chicken and leek etc.)
Fish pie
Shepherd's/cottage pie

when you head up market you tend to get better quality versions of these and then also more refined stuff, particularly whatever game and veg is in season prepared in almost a French style.

No pickled sausages and pickled hard boiled eggs?

Battered cod, with crispy thick cut fries, dark malt vinegar. Hard to get better than that at a pub IMO.

Can you even get some in SF?

Here in Houston we had a place called the Richmond Arms where it was supposedly available. I haven't been there in years and I don't know if it's still open. They had the classic English pub food, but I have no idea how genuine it was.

Our Houston hook-up was at a beer pub, the Flying Saucer, which had "Mexican" pub food!

Ploughman's Lunch FTW. I also adore (and make) little baby Lancashire Cheese & Onion pies, and Scotch Eggs. What about sausage rolls -- bangers baked in pastry, served with picalilly. +1 on the pastys, bangers, and fish & chips. Of course, brown sauce. ~ H

Get the sausage or the steak, and don't have the steak rare.

For the easiest pub style meal make yourself bangers and mash with gravy, I make this fairly regularly, you will need:
Potatoes suitable for mashing
Onions (say 4 large ones for 2-3ppl red ones are good too)
butter
proper sausages, not that frank crap
some white wine or beer (proper ale, not bubbly lager)
Stock cubes
whole grain mustard

Place a fairly decent chunk of butter ( I use about 1/5 or so of the standard pack we get here) at the bottom of a deep pan and heat it, dump in chopped onions and fry them till translucent but not caramelised, then drop the temperature to fairly low and let them chill like that for a bit, add the sock (premixed in whatever proportions are recommended), some of your beer or wine, some mustard, season to taste and let that all simmer for a few hours, the longer the better it should reduce and give you a nice thick gravy, taste and adjust seasoning/mustard/stock whenever.

Simply cook the sausages however you like - grill is healthiest, pan probably tastes best, you are usually told not to pierce them as it keeps the flavour in but sometimes they pop if you don't so whatever you feel like.

Boil potatoes peeled or not depending on taste, then mash with some milk or cream, a bit of cheddar cheese or even some diced chives if you are feeling pretentious.

bang it all on a plate, pour on gravy and serve with green beans or whatever, and beer, proper ale or bitter.

+1 on the Scotch Eggs (not a cute euphemism for some sort of animal's testicles)

+2 on the Scotch Eggs. God, can't get them where I am, and boy they are nice to munch around midnight, in a 150 year old, or so, pub. I miss the pub of my youth

toad in the hole. I really like pub food.

When I am in London or Dublin, I live on Guinness + Shepherd's Pie or Fish and Chips. mmmm mmmm good.