The Strait & Narrow, Lincoln

Official site of The Strait & Narrow - thestraitandnarrow.co.uk

Official site of The Strait & Narrow - thestraitandnarrow.co.uk

After a sly half of cider in the nearby Cardinal's Hat, I was content to end my night in this late night craft beer and cocktail bar on the lower reaches of Lincoln's Steep Hill. It was busy at the bar, but I enjoyed watching the bar staff preparing some very interesting cocktails. This place featured in the Good Beer Guide as recently as 2021, but no longer stocks any real ales. Craft options on draught included UnBarred Bueno Shake (used for some of the cocktails), Lervig House Party, Verdant Sundialer & Neon Raptor Crushing Blows. There was also a vast menu of craft beer in bottled and canned form. Inside was very much a young crowd. The decor is a bit garish. Toilets are upstairs. I'm getting a bit too old for these kind of places!

We managed to get in here at the third time of asking on a busy Saturday evening when this smart modern bar, loosely themed as a Belgian beer bar, was doing a roaring Bank Holiday trade. The pub, located on Lincoln’s iconic Straight, at the bottom of Steep Hill, looks like it might be a shop conversion spread across three units which now form three distinctively separate rooms. You enter via the left of these three spaces, where a doorman explains that you need to text your name to a phone number written on a board at the entrance. Once this is done, a greeter appears from nowhere, greets you by name and takes you to your designated table from which table service is the order of the day. The servery runs down the left-hand side of this first room and has a bare brick counter front and lots of red neon lights across a simple bar back. The room is bare boarded and has high table and stool seating opposite the bar and some comfier options to the rear of the room next to a DJ booth. Moving to the right, you find yourself in the pub’s mid-section, where a large shop-style bay window accommodates curved button backed banquettes which face out to the street, making you feel a bit like a shop dummy if, like us, you find yourself seated here. To the rear, a raised seating area house a couple more tables underneath some huge display cases full of wine, spirit and beer bottles. A third and final space can be found through to the right, where more tables and chairs fill a spacious rea with a brick fireplace, fancy wallpaper and an attractive mirror. A large, detailed beer list was written up on a blackboard on the back wall here, but each table was supplied with a beer menu, which made it much easier to decide what to order. The main from of decoration throughout was in the form of Belgian breweriana including a couple of pub signs that were lit up. Amusingly, the toilets were signed as ‘Madames’ and ‘Van Dammes’! There was no cask ale available on this visit, but the keg selection was pretty wide and included Thornbridge Jaipur, Taylor Hopical Storm and Tiny Rebel Clwb Tropicana alongside plenty of Belgian favourites. An extremely comprehensive bottled beer selection was detailed across numerous pages of the menu and a two-page cocktail list had been designed to look like an Argos catalogue, with waitresses taking the orders on Argos style pads with stubby pens, which was a bit of fun. Orders could be placed with the waiting staff, but also via old telephones which had been put on each table, allowing you to ring the bar, or indeed any other table in the pub, allowing punters to flirt with or talk bollocks to whoever they want without flouting any social distancing rules! This place was doing a very good trade, mainly with student-types, which meant there was a loud, vibrant Saturday evening atmosphere when we were finally allowed in. It felt a bit like a characterful All Bar One or Slug & Lettuce, if you can imagine such a thing, with some interesting décor and plenty of Belgian beer. I enjoyed my time here despite not really being the target market and whilst I’m sure Lincoln has plenty of better pubs, this was a fun way to round out a Saturday night and worth adding to an extended crawl of the city centre.

Large place with two bars to the left. Seating at right and rear. Five hand pumps and countless craft & keg options.

A newish venue in Lincoln and probably the most pretentious, and there's some competition for that title, however the four cask ales are excellent and I defy anyone to find a better choice of Belgian beers on draught , draught mark you, this side of the Channel. In addition there's an array of European stars in fridges, to one side they have shelves displaying the beers plus the branded glasses behind glass. Naturally the pricing is very craft and the uber trendiness continues in having cocktail menus in fake VHS boxes. The furniture is an eclectic mix, tending to the tall. To the right down a few steps is a more traditional dining area lit by a chandelier, there's the expected exposed brick and some ancient timber in this area too.

The Strait & Narrow is at the bottom of the steep walk up to the Cathedral. Once inside there is a largish single room which is divided into different areas and on different levels,the bar is on the upper level,this area is oblong shaped and bare boarded,there are a few tall tables and chairs and comfy bench seating in bays,the lower are has normal tables and chairs. There was a good choice of real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Roosters Wild Mule which went down very well,the other beers noted were By The Horns Lambeth Walk,Thornbridge Jaipur,Taylor Landlord and Idle Valley Imagination. Food was being served and background music was playing. As the other two reviewers have said,this is well worth a visit if in Lincoln. Pub visited 1/8/2015