The Drapers Arms, Canterbury

This bar/restaurant boasts 100 varieties of Belgian beer, so we just had to try it when we came across it on Saturday afternoon. It passed the ‘pub test’ when the waitress confirmed it was okay to come in just for a drink, and I was amused when my ‘is it okay to drink at the bar’ test was met by the landlord trying to give me tasters whilst the waitresses were trying to get me to sit down out of the way. Apparently it was converted from a tailor’s shop in 2010 by the father and son team who now run it. It is in a listed building on a corner plot and is themed on a Belgian bistro, consisting of a main bar/restaurant , with a bakery on one side which has its own external shop door but is integrated internally, and an upstairs restaurant area and a roof terrace. The excellent beer range is served in half pints from about 12 taps (no cask), and the rest is bottled. We enjoyed the Witcap-Pater Stimulo, Chimay, Delirium Tremens and Delirium Red, though wish we’d had time to adventure further through their range. We returned in the evening to find a local studenty acoustic band playing something called ‘fip fok’ music, which is apparently a fusion of folk, pop and hip hop, and surprised me by being really rather good. The place had an excellent buzz to it. They even let me prop up the bar this time. They also do beer tasting evenings fairly regularly, where you pay a fixed £15 for a selection of tapas and beer tastings. This is a really good place and though not cheap is now one of my two ‘must visit’ pubs in Canterbury.