The City Arms, Manchester Central, Manchester

Pub SignMan left this review about The City Arms

Nicely tucked away down an unassuming back street, just a short hop from Albert Square, this is a quality two room traditional pub of the sort that Manchester seems to do very well. You enter into a small front bar with the servery along the left hand wall. The whole room has been done out in dark wood, including the bar counter, flooring and wood panelled walls, but it thankfully manages to feel quite cosy and warm rather than dark and gloomy. The servery has a nice mirrored bar back lined with numerous pump clips and the rest of the room offers some limited seating around the perimeter plus a good deal of standing room in the centre, which is probably very much needed at peak hours. Two steps at the end of the bar, take you down into the lower rear room, set up as a well appointed lounge. Fixed bench seating runs around three sides of the room, with a fine looking fireplace dominating the fourth. There is some dark wood in evidence here too, but the uppers of the walls have been painted in a brighter shade, making the room feel lighter and more spacious than the front bar. There are some nice stained glass windows along the back wall with a lot of books stacked along their sills, whilst a TV screen at one end of the room was showing Home Alone on mute with some music piped through in the background. Some nice old photos of the city line the walls and the corridor leading to the toilets boasts some great glazed tiling that wouldn’t have looked amiss through the rest of the pub.
The pub has a reputation for offering a good selection of well kept ales and this was very much in evidence when I was confronted by handpulls dispensing Green Mill Cat’s Whiskers, Titanic Plum Porter, Empire Moonrakers Mild, Framework Jackpin, Navigation Rebel, Nightjar Lost in IKEA and Bank Top Flat Cap. The bar staff were friendly and efficient and served me a really good pint of the Moonrakers Mild.
This is a cracking pub that does keeps things pretty basic, but does all those basic things extremely well. I really enjoyed sitting down in the lounge with a great pint of beer in hand and could easily have spend much longer working my way through their full range. Well worth including on any city centre crawl and an absolute must for fans of unpretentious, traditional boozers.

On 5^th February 2019 - rating: 8
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