SIR - As one who regularly lunches in local pubs, and has done so for most of the last 40 years, I believe I can offer a fair criticism of the pub food generally on offer these days.

We see and hear a good deal about the increasingly high standard of pub meals, and the prevalence of so-called gastro' pubs, presumably in London or the South, because there seem to be none in Bradford!

Instead, we have a very large number of heat-up' establishments; that is, pubs with verbose menus inaccurately describing dishes bought, made up and frozen in some central factory then heated up cheaply in the pub kitchen, and often called "home cooked".

Moreover, however flowery the menu description, all the menus offer virtually the same dishes.

Only a few years ago all these pubs offered real home-cooked food, and in wide variety. Now it's all tasteless steak', rubber chicken breasts, imitation tikka masala, steak and ale pie, pork-and-leak sausages and chips, chips, chips or jacket potatoes. Whatever happened to real food with flavour?

It would be good to hear from mass-food suppliers why their products are so dull and unappetising -or is it just to make them cheap?

Ian R McDougall, Hawkswood Avenue, Heaton