A pub I've been visiting for decades got a big renovation - here's what I made of the changes

Thankfully, when the doors reopened of The Bear Tavern, Bearwood, seeing the same landlady behind the bar meant one of my favourite pubs got a makeover, not a personality transplant.

Greene King is the current owner of The Bear - a national chain, which usually means their food will try to be all things to all types of people.

Well, the new menu had plenty of offers, had more choice and was cheaper than a Greene King pub in Birmingham city centre – well, President Clinton did have a pint at that one after all.

The menu felt like it had been put together by a focus group, full of people who go to the pub between 2pm and 7pm and go home.

However, that’s not a criticism - it is a menu full of pub classic dinners, all scraping in under £12, not including the steaks.

There was a bit of a lack of starters that I fancied, however, which meant I would have to be creative – and I struck gold.

Because, there on the sides menu, too far from each other to be a couple, but near enough to create that frisson of excitement when they meet: chips and two slices of bread and butter.

And I had the choice between white and brown, I went for white. Sliced from a bloomer, no less.

The boffins at the Greene King Sports app (if you download it you get a free drink) have missed a trick, because the Bear is the closest of their pubs to the birthplace of Steve Bloomer.

Born in Cradley, Bloomer was a marauding Derby County striker who was given the brilliant nickname The Destroying Angel as he broke scoring records for England in the 1920s.

The Bloomer Chip Buttie would be a fitting tribute to the man who Derby fans still sing about.

There were other chips on the menu, but I respect the chip enough to be satisfied with potato flavour without feeling the need to add cheese, chilli or whatever the latest fad is.

The chips arrived in a dish, more than enough for the butties and some to be dipped in ketchup or mayo. The bread was already sliced so the buttie could be created and consumed.

Those three flavours, together, create a culinary combination of perfection. As a whole, the chip buttie is greater than the sum of its parts.

Bread, butter and chips. All for under £4. What’s not to like?

The Bear Chip Buttie has been stored in my brain’s skint hard drive - it will come in handy one day, I am sure of it.

But this was a meal out with my lady, not a date on my own staring into the middle distance trying to stretch a tenner to include booze and food.

All day I was looking forward to having sausage, mash and gravy, to bring back good memories of London - but also to remind me why I left as it would be way cheaper.

I scoured the menu for sausage and mash. The closest to it was the Cumberland sausage on a large Yorkshire pudding (£10.29).

The menu was not wrong - it was not sausages, but a sausage: one which curled round into an ever-decreasing little circle.

I get the sausage and Yorkshire pudding combination, Toad in the Hole, but this wasn’t that. It felt like the Yorkshire pudding was a late replacement to allay the sadness of sausage lovers who felt short changed by the curly-wurly Cumberland.

The sausage was on top of mash, which was in the Yorkshire pudding, there were peas with a pot of gravy too.

The menu promised “a jug” of gravy but it was no jug - again this might be a case of lost in translation, with the menu-makers down south and people who describe stuff normally like us.

The lady went for the steak and ale pie (£10.29), with the option of chips, which were different chips than those I had wolfed down with bread and butter. Her’s were thicker, a kind of ‘chippy’ chip.

Her pie was deep, filled with chunks of meat with ale-y gravy oozing out of every open edge of the pie. It was a slice of a bigger pie, which makes you feel part of something bigger. There were peas, and a little pot of gravy too.

She got the better deal, that is for sure, but then again I had the chip buttie to keep me occupied after my sausage frisbee was gone in three bites.

The Bearwood Road pub was packed, with all sorts of people, and thankfully the bar ran like clockwork.

There is bar and table service.

Greene King’s London press office was so excited about the pub’s reopening it had a bad case of the Cradley and Cradley Heath mix-up.

And the calamity had made it on to Facebook. “Popular Birmingham pub, The Bear Tavern, Smethwick.”

Ouch. Only two name places but wrong three times – The Bear Tavern is not in Birmingham, it’s Sandwell and not in Smethwick, but the clue is in the name, Bearwood.

I suppose, if you are in London, we are talking 100 metres’ difference on both sides.

Now for the desserts - on the menu there was apple pie slice, with custard or vanilla ice cream (£4.49), which was my choice, but alas they were out of stock, trust my luck.

So I went for something I’d never seen before: Strawberries & Cream Ice Cream Cake (£4.95), cookie dough base topped with strawberry ice cream, white chocolate ganache, meringue crumbs and drizzled with strawberry flavour sauce. There was a lot going on there, I thought, but let’s give it a go.

It was a proper slab of sweetness, which all worked well together, it was a two-spoon job because the lady wanted to get involved too after one spoonful.

Adding the “flavoured sauce”, which is basically what you get in tubs from the back of an ice cream van, was an inspired touch of culinary chutzpah.

To finish off in style we had three baby Guinnesses for a fiver.