The Eastgate, Chichester

A Saturday morning of ticking the 4 pubs that appear in the 2017 GBG, started here at this nice old Fullers pub which sits at the end of the High street coming from the Cathedral. 5 ales on the hand pumps with 4 offerings from Fuller's and the guest which was Castle Rock's Preservation @ 4.4%. I went for the guest and it was a good beer to start the day with. A pleasant pub with modern décor in the front bar and a tad older style towards the rear. The clientele were mainly made up of over 60 yr old gentleman. We only stopped for a pint before moving on as time was going against us. A thoroughly decent pub with good attentive service.

The Eastgate is a welcoming enough town pub with an open-plan bar, a wood-burning stove and an area for diners. The front wooden floored bar space is small but has a spacious feel with a large red-walled pillar separating the front from the back. Beyond this is the carpeted lounge with woodburner stove and sofa making a centrepiece. Then there is a heated patio garden to the rear, which will be the venue for a beer festival in July according to the advertising posters. Also looked like music is a feature at the weekends as there were posters detailing Karaoke on the first Saturday of each month and live bands at least once a month. It is another former Gales pub that is now run by Fullers. Five ale pumps available with two beers from the Fullers name and two from the Gales name in addition to a guest ale and for my visit Seafarers, Pride and HSB and ESB plus a guest in the shape of Buttcombe Bitter, and the Seafarers and HSB we tried were decent enough. Although we didn’t try it, from what we could see it offers a good-quality traditional home-cooked pub food menu and there were home made scotch eggs served from the bar. I found this a pleasant enough pub, but if you had time to do only one of the two Fullers outlets in town my view would be to duck this one in favour of the more characterful Park Tavern. But again to prove that opinions on what makes a good pub are purely subjective, my wife thought that the Eastgate was the best pub we visited in Chichester, and I am sure the fact that the Eastgate is run by two landladies and provided, in her view, a high level of cleanliness and especially the ladies toilets, which she considered as some of the best she has ever visited in a British pub, was the major influence for this statement.

A Fullers pub with five pumps ; Seafarers, Pride, HSB and ESB from the Fullers range, with Burton Bridge Gold as a guest. The ESB was fair if unspectacular, whilst the Burton Bridge was, in my opinion, undrinkable. The loud and inappropriate music summed up a fairly dire experience. The bar is located to the bare-boarded front of the pub, which is also home to an attractive fireplace but is otherwise fairly charmless. On the back of this visit, do the Park Tavern if you want a Fuller’s pub in Chichester.

Nice pub, opened up with high ceilings and a patio garden. Tidy and traditional in a kind of Georgian way. Service is very slow, but friendly and the beer is worth the wait with well kept Fullers and a guest, Castle Rock Harvest Pale on my visit. Nice.