What Makes A Great Pub?

IT’S been 70 years since George Orwell posted an article in the London Evening Standard listing the attributes of his favourite pub in the land, the Moon Under Water (you can probably guess he didn’t mean the Wetherspoons on Deansgate).

You can go to the supermarket, buy four cans of special brew and get off your face under a bridge somewhere

Orwell’s ideal boozer was an intimate ‘back street’ affair only ‘two minutes from a bus stop’. There was draught stout, open fires, cheap grub, ‘motherly’ barmaids, no music and regulars who ‘occupy the same chair every evening’. The fittings, Orwell explains, are ‘uncompromisingly Victorian’, with grained woodwork, ornamental mirrors and few ‘modern miseries’.

Of course, Orwell eventually concedes there's no such place as the Moon Under Water, though, we reckon if he’d stumbled into Sam’s Chop House and taken a characteristically sturdy wooden stool beside one particular regular, LS Lowry (who hasn’t left his chair for five years now), it might have come close to Orwell's ideal.

Sam's Chop House

In 1999 Roger Ward, an advertising executive of fifteen years, lost his father, his mother-in law and his dog within the space of a few weeks. It was time for a re-think. So Ward, as is often the case, turned to drink. Except Ward opened a pub, Sam's Chop House, with his pal Steve Pilling (the man behind Damson, The Dockyard and a handful of Northern Quarter bars) in 2000.

Since then Ward has taken full control of The Victorian Chop House group and opened Mr Thomas's Chop House on Cross Street and The Albert Square Chop House, completing a triangulum of some of the best-loved traditional boozers in the city.

Actually, the best-loved boozer in the city, after Sam's Chop House last month scooped the Confidential Readers' Best Pub in Manchester 2016, following a Twitter vote-off amassing over 5000 votes.

Here Ward tells us what makes a great pub and how we can save them:

You’re Confidential readers’ favourite pub in Manchester. How does that feel?

RW: “It felt absolutely fantastic - it was amazing to see the engagement from customers and the way the staff got behind it. It was taken a touch too seriously by one or two people but it was fun and we all really enjoyed the contest. It gave us all a boost during the Trampocalypse (Ward’s moniker for the Council’s Second City Crossing Metrolink which has all but rendered Sam's invisible from Cross Street).

Victorian Chop House owner Roger Ward playing bouncer outside The Albert Square Chop House

Tell us, what makes a really good boozer?

RW: "A good pub makes you feel at home, serves good beer, has nice places to relax, it’s intimate and cosy and welcoming. You can list all the qualities but really it’s intangible; it just feels right the second you walk in. We’ve all known them, played out life in them, and it’s such a shame that there are fewer and fewer of them.

"There’s an explosion of bars and restaurants but old-fashioned pubs and boozers are decreasing. I’d love to know how many there were when we opened Sam's - now there’s only a handful. It’s important for us as a society to keep them, they’re part of our heritage. There used to be one on every corner when our granddads were around.

So what can we do to save them?

RW: "Cherish the ones we’ve got left. To give advice to every publican - and myself - keep making them better. And relevant; you can’t just make them pieces of history. You’ve got to strive all the time to improve the product. It’s sad but the food these days is what gives a pub its licence to live on as a place to booze in. I’ve just moved to Chorlton and my favourite pub is The Beech, which is just a boozer - it doesn’t do food - but there are so few of those now. We’ve got to earn the right to be relevant and compete with fancy, swanky bars that are spending a million pounds on a refit. But the boozers have got history and authenticity, they haven’t, something that connects with the soul of us Brits."

Mr Lowry perched at the Sam's Chop House bar

What's killing pubs today?

RW: "The biggest issue is duty. Look at fuel - how much of that gallon that goes into your car is going to the chancellor? The proportion is horrific and it’s identically so in our industry: you can go to the supermarket, buy four cans of special brew and get off your face under a bridge somewhere. Or you can enjoy it in a pub or restaurant but pay duty through your teeth - that’s a major issue.

"Another major issue is that we’re becoming a cookie cutter nation; every high street is the same, with the same chains everywhere. In this homogenised world, pubs are unique because they’ve got their own location-specific character, history and feel. That now is their greatest strength but also their greatest weakness, because as a society people are forgetting to be original, to be independent and think for themselves. They don’t have the confidence to experience brands they don’t know and trust. You won’t find a hundred Sam’s Chop Houses but you might find a hundred Piccolinos and that gives them certain advantages."

...and we assume the council's Second City Crossing project hasn't helped you?

RW: "We don’t call it that, we call it the ‘trampocalypse’. It has been an unmitigated disaster for every business around Cross Street that relies on footfall. However, we are beginning to see the end - we cannot bloody wait. No one is against the trams, we all think they will make Manchester a better city, but it has been pretty horrible to live with. Sam’s lives up Chapel Walks, in the land that time forgot, and it does affect morale - even though in that time we’ve won two customer awards, one the ‘best pub’ and another the ‘best gastropub’. It’s wonderful to know people remember us and care about us, especially when you’re having a tough time."

Gordo presents the Sam's team with their 'Best Pub' award

Are there future plans for more Chop Houses - or does finding somewhere with heritage make it difficult?

RW: "It does make it hard for us to copy, paste, replicate. I would love to have more but yes, the criteria for us are a little more stringent. All of our buildings are difficult to operate in, they’re all listed buildings. We need to have a lot of character and authentic history before we’d even consider opening a Chop House. We’ve got our eye on somewhere but it’s yet to be confirmed.

Finally, when you’re not in a Chop House, where do you eat and drink?

RW: "Like I say I’ve just moved to Chorlton and have discovered the most fantastic tapas bar called San Juan. Yes, sometimes you have to wait an hour and a half but it’s well worth it. I love the fact that in the late evening it’s full of Spanish people who - despite the weather - have made a little community in Chorlton. It’s for Spanish people, by Spanish people and we’re lucky they let a few of us Mancunians in to enjoy ourselves. And as mentioned before my favourite boozer at the moment is The Beech, an old-fashioned boozer that serves beer and if you’re lucky a glass of wine. As William Lees Jones once said, ‘a pub is a place where blokes go to talk bollocks’. You can talk a lot of bollocks in The Beech. 

You can find Sam's Chop House on Back Pool Fold off Cross Street, Manchester M2 1HN. 0161 834 3210