The Blue Elephant, Ketley

Rating: 5/10. Andy Richardson says that the Blue Elephant in Ketley fails to deliver an experience you will never forget.

It’s time for a social history lesson. In the days before Tesco ruled the world and beer was only 17p a can, men would meet in pubs.

They would talk about the news of the day, pontificate on the fortunes of Eng-erland at some such football tournament, and converse with friends about low wages, their wives and roadworks in their street. Pubs were part of the fabric of our society. They were hubs within individual communities.

At times of national celebration – Jubilees, Olympics and Eng-erland playing at some such football tournament – they would be festooned with flags and banners. Drinkers and non-drinkers alike would converge to eat curled cheese sandwiches and drink warm pints of watered down beer, or, in more recent times, to drink lager tops and watch events on a seven storey-high plasma screen.

It seems strange that in just a few years, pubs seem to have all but disappeared from our map. Each week, more and more close.

The number of pubs in towns and villages across Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin has been reduced by scores in recent years and there seems no sign of them returning.

Derelict buildings have found a new use, however. In the place of former pubs, a number of other businesses have sprung up.

Some have been bulldozed and converted to supermarkets, others have become convenience stores and an increasing number have been transformed into restaurants that specialise in low-cost food, usually of Chinese or Indian origin.

One such venue is the Blue Elephant, in Ketley, on the outskirts of Telford. It was once a thriving pub, serving nearby housing estates, but as trade dwindled, the pub closed its doors. The building stood empty for some time before being given a new lease of life by businessmen who wanted to invest.

They created the Blue Elephant, a popular Indian restaurant that offers high-value, low-price dinners for the local community. It’s struck a chord with local residents and thrives as people pop in for early evening food, weekend dinners and more.

My friend and I met there recently, arriving straight from a long day at the office – much as we might have done had we been meeting in a pub ten years ago. Except, instead of ordering pints of bitter or lager, we were ordering chicken jalfrezi and naan.

The Blue Elephant isn’t the most prepossessing of places. It’s been decorated with hard-wearing but unsophisticated carpet and the interior doesn’t sing and dance with high-end brilliance. It’s functional, utilitarian – just the way pubs used to be. The focus remains a bar, which is placed at the centre of the room, with tables fanning out from it like a wagon wheel.

We arrived during the early evening. In an era not so long ago, we’d have walked up to the bar to order pints of frothy ale, before settling in for a game of pool, snooker or darts. This time, however, in the post-cheap-supermarket-booze-age, three waiters fluttered around our tables like butterflies, offering drinks and answering questions about the menu. We started with a mix of poppadoms, pakora and bhajee, which were ferried to our table in short time. All were pleasant, without being stand out.

The poppadoms were light, crisp and unoily while the pakora and bhajee were mildly seasoned and again, thankfully, were not overly greasy.

Our dinner was punctuated by drinks and we soon enjoyed our mains, my friend enjoying a prawn jalfrezi while I enjoyed a chicken balti. The job of the food critic is to describe in detail the highs and lows of their dinners.

The Blue Elephant places me in a tricky position, because there was little spectacular about its food. It was neither exceptional nor particularly disappointing. It was fine, so-so, fair-to-middling, not-too-bad. It didn’t dance like a high-kicking party girl, it didn’t smack us around the face with a hot-as-lava chilli, it didn’t jump out of the jack-in-a-box with a gleeful surprise saying ‘Eat Me, I’m Delicious’. It was just okay, not too bad and not too good.

Not the worst we’ve ever eaten and certainly not the best.

My friend opted for dessert, though more in jest than a desire to sweet his palate following an average curry.

“I fancy one of those penguins, the plastic ones, with ice cream in.”

And so he had a plastic penguin with ice cream in it. It tasted, he told me, as you’d expect an ice-cream-filled plastic peguin to taste.

“S’all right,” he said. He didn’t squawk, if that’s what penguins do. And I’m not sure what he did with the penguin afterwards, though I’m pretty sure he took it home with him.

The social landscape may have shifted, but in many ways nothing has changed. Though The Blue Elephant is no longer a pub, it still serves the safe function that ever it did.

People meet there during evenings and weekends, they talk about stuff, distract themselves for a while with average drinks or food, then make their way homes, happy to have caught up with friends.

As the French say: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – or, as the good people of Ketley prefer: the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.

ADDRESS

The Blue Elephant: Holyhead Road, Ketley, Telford, TF1 5AN

Telephone: 01952 253024

Rating: 5/10

FOOD

Fine. Average. Not bad.

SERVICE

Polite and well-meaning, if not a little distracted.

LOCAL/SEASONAL

Not at all. It’s standard curry house fayre. And plastic penguins aren’t in season in spring or summer.