Mr Thomas's Chop House, Manchester

During a recent Tuesday evening visit I entered Mr Thomas’s Chop House through the Cross Street entrance that gains access to a small bar with a black and white tiled floor and beer shelves with stools around the walls. The bar supports three hand pumps which were drawing Mr Tom’s Pale Ale and Black Sheep’s Best. The third pump was unused. A short corridor leads to a long and thin area that is more of a café bar. The bar counter in here supports standard and premium keg along with another three hand pumps that were drawing TT Landlord and Boltmaker alongside Bradfield Brewery’s Farmers Blonde. This is a corner pub, so windows run the length of one side, although they are leaded and distorted and face onto an alley so they offer little to no light. Green and white tiled walls run up through a couple of arches to the other end of the pub that is accessed via St Anne’s Churchyard. The walls are adorned with pictures of people whom I assumed to be famous and may or may not have visited here at some point. No TV spotted, but there was background music playing. Like any self-respecting old city centre pub, the downstairs toilet stinks and has a film of piss on the floor. I was glad to visit this historic place and have a nose around, but I don’t plan to revisit.

This is a long and narrow cafe-bar style pub, with entrances both from Cross Street and from the church square behind. The front door had "exit only" signs, but they were not visible until after entering, so I exited and went round to the back, where a member of staff was perplexed to see me coming through the back door, and directed me to the front of the pub where the bar counter is situated - it's diners only at the back. I asked the barman about the signing-in process, and he sent me to the back, where I was once again told to go to the bar. Was this Covid-restrictions gone mad? The barman and I ended up shrugging at each other. My visit here was one of my first trips outside Sheffield after last year's lockdown ended. I had become used to the improved standard of beers in my local pubs as they gradually returned to normal. I observed many pubs serving fewer beers than before Covid as there were fewer people out and about to drink them, and better quality beer was a side-effect. Not so here, where my pint of Timothy Taylor Boltmaker, costing £4.50, was served to me in a warm glass and was well below standard. The more of it I drank, the worse it seemed to get, being not just warm and tired but borderline sour. In the end I left half of it. My only reason for coming here was because of the Camra heritage interior, but even that was not terribly impressive. Or at least, so it seems now, after suffering my first poor drink of 2021. Date of visit: 23rd June 2021

Official site of Mr Thomas's Chop House - www.tomschophouse.com

Official site of Mr Thomas's Chop House - www.tomschophouse.com

A long narrow historic pub with tiled floor and much ceramic work around the walls. the chop house restaurant part is at the rear, with a small standee bar at the front and an outdoor area at the back. A fair range of draught beers included Timothy Taylor's Landlord and Double Spring, Black Sheep, Robinsons Dizzy Blonde and Dartmoor Darkness, as well as a house-badged ale.