Antwerp Arms, Tottenham, N17

Pub SignMan left this review about Antwerp Arms

This is a good-sized back-street local’s pub, close to White Hart Lane Stadium and with an emphasis on well-kept cask ale. You enter to a compact front bar area with the servery on the rear wall and some very limited seating options around the perimeter, mainly under the front windows. The servery has a pleasant dark wood counter and traditional bar back whilst the rest of the room boasts some rather nice partitioning screens with attractive decorative panes. Décor is fairly simple, with the eye generally caught by the TV screens dotted around the walls showing muted live football. The room extends down the right-hand side for a long way to the rear, with tile flooring and half panelled tongue and groove walls with cream uppers throughout. Things have been brightened up somewhat by the addition of some art prints, old photos and a dartboard, although more of the above is needed in reality, as these are long plain walls that need as much sprucing up as they can get. A couple of skylights and a large patio door to the rear help illuminate this part of the room in daylight hours and there was another TV screen also showing the muted football match. The patio doors open out to a beer garden furnished with some sturdy looking benches and popular with the smokers who were constantly coming and going throughout my stay. It goes without saying that my visit, immediately after a Spurs home fixture, saw the place rammed, but the staff coped pretty well at the bar and it was far easier to get served than it was to move through the pub.
The four operational handpulls were all dispensing beer from the nearby Redemption brewery, with Hopspur, Pale Ale, Trinity and Fellowship all available on this occasion. My pint of the Trinity was very well kept and slipped down nicely, perhaps because the locals seemed to be putting away a lot of the redemption beers between them, ensuring good throughput.
I definitely could’ve caught this pub at a better time, but despite the crowds and lack of standing room, I really enjoyed my visit here, having a bit of good banter with some Spurs fans and enjoying the tasty local beer. It’s nice to see a back-street boozer in an unfashionable neighbourhood turn things around and start doing well for itself – I’ll try to get back out here on a non-match day to appreciate the place at a slower pace.

On 1^st April 2020 - rating: 8
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