Walking up Barnstaple High Street on a Sunday afternoon with my mate Charles Street looking for a good value Sunday roast, or appetites pricked a bitterly cold trudge through the sludge. We were tossing up the pros and cons of trying a roastie at the all new White Horse in Boutport Street(Glad to see that it has reverted to it's original name), the carvery at the Fortescue or just settle for the tried and tested option of the Weatherspoons Sunday club £6.99 value roast. I was rather peeved to have my ollafactory senses assailed by an all too familiar smell, not at all familiar to Barum but very familiar from my time in exile in South East London that is the unmistakable claggy stench of KFC. The Colonel has come to town and has drawn his tank right up smack bang in the middle of the High Street. Now, I have nothing against a KFC from time to time but I wonder whether when any planning permission was sought the smell was factored in. It really is all pervasive. Depending on your mood or culinary prevalence it could be considered to be either enticingly delicious or conversely a rotten nauseating reek. In my mind an argument could be made for it being a form of environmental pollution. Yesterday afternoon the stink could be smelt right from Mermaid Cross in one direction all the way up to the Market in the other. Also as I pass by I don't particularly like to suffer the sight of a bunch of the Town's more bovine citizens chugging down bargain buckets and nuggets. This is an eyesore and is hard to tolerate. I haven't mentioned the health concerns the first time I passed it was about 10 'o' clock in the morning and the place was full of people gobbling down fried food. I noticed that many of the patrons were already erring on the side of obesity.
KFC is only one of a rash of fast food joints that have opened in the area over the last few years. Recently, Burger King has opened at Let's Go Bowling on our own mini U.S. style mini strip mall over at Pottington and Subway has also been a relatively new addition. I have to add that in my travels all over the world Barum appears to be the only place I have been where people actually seem to like a Subway! Again it has it's own signature doughy pong. The two McDonalds drive thrus up on the outskirts and the Wimpy restaurant up at Roundswell have been doing a roaring trade as has the established albeit relocated Wimpy in the High Street.
A few years back before all of these developments I often remarked that Barum was a town ripe for emburgerfication as a town full of pasty munchers and given the success of our own homegrown fast food joints Mr M's and Fernando's Hideaway and the Barum Takeaway I was surprised that no one had thought of opening up a global brand burger franchise. I appear to have been proved right.
Along with KFC, Caffe Nero or Caffe Nerd as it is known by many, has also opened up to great excitement by many and along with it's neighbour Costa Coffee this represents a far more aspirational brand than the aforementioned burger bar. These two establishments are in turn owned by a venture capital company and a global food and drinks concern. However, this doesn't seem to impact upon the rather smug looking clientele that you spy sitting in the comfy chairs in the prime window seats. I am convinced that these people reckon they are on the set of Friends or are aspiring to some kind of quasi metropolitan lifestyle rather than sitting in a bland ubiquitous coffee shop in a North devon market town. In my mind give me a decent machine made espresso and mini pasty at Pasty Presto or a fanatstic zesty dark roast at the Boston Tea Party any day. I am also partial to the traditional British style frothy coffee that they serve up in the Market Cafe, the town's sole surviving greasy spoon.
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