The Architect, Chester

Surprised to find I haven't already reviewed the Architect, as I have visited a handful of times over recent years. This is a fairly upmarket pub with a focus on food and several side rooms are laid out for dining with the bar area being more informal. There is also a private dining room upstairs. At the bar are eight hand pulls offering several beers that could be considered to be reasonably mainstream, but there was also a Joules beer, possibly one by Neptune (the logo looked familiar) and Mobberley Brewhouse. There also appeared to be a couple of craft keg options, from Magic Rock and Tiny Rebel. In addition there is a fridge full of craft cans and a big chalk board listing them all. A further four hand pulls were spotted on a small section of bar but these had two duplicated from the main bank and two were unclipped. My Mobberley Brewhouse Dark Winter (2019 Edition) set me back £2 for a half and was a pretty good stout. As has been mentioned, there is a massive beer garden and this is a big draw in the warmer months as I can't think of anywhere else in the city centre with a beer garden on this kind of scale.

A nice modern pub for a change. Smack bang opposite the racecourse so obviously on race days it will be packed with boring horsey bores. That said on other days its not too bad if a bit snobby. Several real ales available and a nice garden area that's very sunny on summer days.

This is still a Bruning & Price pub, and follows their usual format of having a decent selection of ales (there were eight real ales on in here) and tastefully decorated interiors. This was my first experience of Chester pubs, and discovered that all ales here are dispensed through sparklers, so Londoners beware! Inside it's a large affair with plenty of interconnected drinking and dining areas, with quite a lot of tables laid for diners. I didn't get to examine a menu, but I know from experience that Bruning & Price pubs serve good quality food, but are quite expensive. However, the main attraction of this pub on a sunny day as, somewhat surprisingly, it was on the day I visited is the extensive outside seating areas either on the patio area or the lawn overlooking Chester racecourse. This is not exactly a traditional boozer, but is most definitely worth stopping off to visit if you're walking the Chester wall.

Official site of The Architect - www.brunningandprice.co.uk