Category: Norfolk

Having been away from Norwich for a while, I’ve started to get a little behind with visiting some of the more popular places that have opened up in recent months. This is FupBurger who are located the Dog House pub in Norwich, although they seem to now be so dominant here that they might as well just change the name of the pub. We arrived at 17:30, but the venue was full by 18:00 and they were turning customers, all of whom were looking for food, away.

The drinks menu where the prices are towards the higher end of the scale. The beer options are credible, but broadly not particularly interesting to me.

The concept is primarily that of burgers, but there are a range of other options there as well such as nachos and loaded fries. The meat is locally sourced and provided by Clarkes Butchers in Hevingham and is is positive to know the origins of the food. FupBurger also have another set-up similar to this, at the Harbour Inn in Lowestoft.

The staff in the pub were all friendly, with a welcoming greeting and engaging table service offered. There’s quite a fast turnover of tables here, but we were never rushed during our time here, even when they were turning customers away because they were so busy.

The Mangolicious from the Laine Brew Co in Brighton, which was a fruity beer which tasted of mango, although it wasn’t particularly rich or decadent.

And the main event, I ordered the double burger with a side of fries. The fries were heavily salted, even for my quite liberal needs (can salt tastes be liberal?) but tasted fine. The burger was meaty and this was quite decadent, rich and tasting of a good quality. The cheese was ideal for me, just processed slices of American cheese rather than some overpowering cheese sauce which wrecked the whole thing. There was plenty of burger sauce, something I also liked, although their recipe for that is secret but it’s mayonnaise based. The bacon was crispy rather than fatty and the brioche roll was fresh, with the whole arrangement being the sort of burger that I like.

The pricing isn’t cheap, especially with the 10% service charge automatically added, but the surroundings are clean, the staff are friendly, it’s all on-trend and the food was of a very good quality. The burgers are also very Instagrammable, especially for those who order the Quad burger, and some of the popularity of the restaurant has been driven by their social media engagement. I don’t know if they’ll be able to keep the novelty factor up, but that the quality is high, they’ve got a good chance of remaining relevant and popular. Given all that, I was glad to visit this restaurant and I can see why it has become so busy over recent months.

I used to visit the White Lion on Oak Street in Norwich regularly and indeed had my 40th birthday get together there as well. However, in recent years, the bright lights of the Artichoke, Plasterers, Leopard and King’s Head have shone brighter, and they’re also much nearer to where I live, so I haven’t visited much.

And here’s one of my favourite photos, Andrew and Susan enjoying themselves, with an eight year old looking Nathan serving behind the bar. Hopefully he won’t read this before we go to the pub tonight…..

Anyway, I went back at the weekend as it was the Legstretchers Christmas party. This is the very exciting long-distance walking group of Norfolk Ramblers that I brought back to life in 2016, but I retired a couple of months ago and Maria and Stephen have now taken it over. Maria had a marvellous idea to host the Christmas party at the White Lion, so I felt the need to go along.

The food and drinks menu….

Back in the day, the White Lion was a cider pub and probably the best in Norwich, an award it frequently won from CAMRA. I had the Black Prince Porter from Bexley Brewery and the Kaiser from Welbeck Abbey Brewery, which were both well-kept, but they weren’t the most exciting and there was a limited depth of flavour from either. The keg selection of beers at the White Lion is quite weak, but at least they’ve got a number of real ales available.

The burger, which was sufficiently meaty and tasted of a decent quality, with the wedges being cooked perfectly. I didn’t quite work out what the slightly hard lumps on the burger were, but the coleslaw was very moreish. A number of our group was eating and everyone seemed happy with their food, with the portion of nachos looking very generous.

After we had listened to Richard sneezing, this was my attempt to teach everyone the rules of bar billiards after the meal……

On the service, well, that was excellent. The member of staff behind the bar was engaging, friendly and personable, so the welcome felt authentic and genuine. Indeed, all of the staff members were warm and hospitable, there’s a really good team working here and they were a great credit to the pub. This feels like a really well-run pub and I suspect that someone new to the area who wanted to meet new friends would have some success here, a key measure of a venue in my eyes.

If I’m being honest, the beer selection isn’t quite decadent enough to tempt me away from my usual haunts. However, what they had was well-kept and the pub is offering one of the best welcomes that I’ve had this year, so that’s all really positive. I’m sure that I shall visit again, perhaps on a more regular basis to recent months. I’ve never had the Sunday lunch here, either because I’ve been walking or out of the country, but it’s well reviewed and I will get the chance to try it one day…..

I missed this Gaia art installation by a couple of days when it was in Hull a few weeks ago, so I was pleased to see that it was coming to St. Peter Mancroft Church in central Norwich. The installation is designed by Luke Jerram to encourage people to think about environmental issues and also our place on the planet.

The earth gently revolves and there’s some background music as well to support the whole arrangement.

The installation certainly brought lots of visitors to the church and apparently it was popular with families last week during Half Term. There was a friendly team of volunteers at the entrance to the church who were giving Gaia bookmarks out and welcoming people, which I thought was rather lovely. I also saw the church’s shop doing a brisk trade in various different items such as Christmas cards, so it seems to have been a worthwhile project for them.

There are a few similar installations to allow for multiple events, but there’s a list of where Gaia is going to be in the future at https://my-earth.org/tour-dates/ and it’s at Keele for three weeks this month, which I can imagine will look suitably exciting in the chapel. This is all free of charge for visitors and I liked the whole air of optimism behind the project, which seemed evident in the friendliness and warmth of the volunteers. An uplifting experience I’d say.

As the sign handily indicates, I booked a table for four people to go to Redwells, located in railway arches between the village of Trowse and the decadent offices of Norfolk County Council. It’s good to support a local brewery, although I’ve rather lost track of their financial issues, staffing changes and the like that have been reported in the local press.

The entrance would be slightly more impressive without the cars, but the signage is pretty clear to guide customers in.

This is a working brewery, with the brew tap type arrangement open on Fridays to Sundays.

The beer choices were all from Redwell, with no guest options available. I can’t say that there was anything sensationally good and there were a limited number of different beer styles available, but the West Coast Pale was definitely above average and I’d willingly have that again.

There were two food options, the pizzas which I think are always here, along with the rotating extra food option from Namaste which is a local vegetarian Indian restaurant that I quite like. I’m not sure how financially useful these pop-up arrangements are for companies such as Namaste as Redwells wasn’t that busy, but I suppose it’s good advertising and decent promotion for them.

I went with the Indian option, although I know from past experience that the pizza options really are beautifully decadent too.

I decided to go for the Maharaja Combo Meal, with a samosa, chilli cauliflower gobi, chana masala and rice. I have to say that it was really rather lovely, even the cauliflower tasted decent. A richness of flavours and a reminder that vegetarian food can be absolutely delicious.

And here’s the brewery set-up at the rear. There’s plenty of inside seating, although it’s best to book this in advance, with outside seating as well during the warmer months of the year. Beer ordering was either at the bar or using the app, and although the others in our group went to the bar, I was quite content using the app and not having to walk anywhere.

In an ideal world there would have been a decadent dark beer for me, but the environment was clean, the service was always polite, the company was charming (especially mine) and I enjoyed the food. A rather lovely experience and I’ll keep a little eye out for whatever food outlets will be making an appearance here.

Some of the ideas that my friend Nathan and I have in the pub transpire to be perhaps a little braver in the cold light of day than we had initially anticipated. The latest visionary idea this week is us playing squash, although he’s quite competent at that, and it’s fair to say that I’m not. The idea was that we would have a little go today, which sounded a marvellous idea at the time.

On reflection the day after I realised that there was the little problem that I wasn’t really kitted out for all of this. My trainers were rather muddier than I had remembered them being, primarily as I keep walking everywhere traipsing through fields. The upshot of all that is that I required a morning trip to Sports Direct, the only shop that I could find that sold suitable shoes at a bargain price.

I meandered into Sports Direct and was already slightly pre-annoyed as it’s a controversial company that isn’t perhaps always known for doing the right thing. Anyway, I decided not to get too involved in the politics of commerce and I was moderately annoyed to find that for the first time in years when I needed assistance from the staff that they weren’t very forthcoming. After I had decided this was all too much stress I found a staff member and asked where the squash shoe things were. It transpired that I was standing next to them, which wasn’t ideal as it made me look like an idiot, but I was able to answer the key question asked of me quite decisively. Namely answering the “how much are you looking to spend?” with the answer of “these ones look the cheapest, I’ll have these”. Bargain found in the shoe size that was convenient, I then went to Pret to have a rest. I can see now why people need to go to a cafe after shopping, it’s frankly exhausting.

I’ve digressed here. I nervously walked to the squash courts to see Nathan looking like Jonah Barrington, which didn’t add to my confidence levels. Fortunately, he proved to be a very tolerant and good teacher (Nathan, not Jonah, although I’m sure that he was too) and he was able to turn the heating off in the courts which was my first concern. Why the hell is there heating in a squash court? I was reassured that there was no-one in the viewing gallery area above, as that would have very definitely annoyed me.

There seems to be a lot of running about and the ball bounces in a slightly different way to what I had expected, with rather more walls to bounce the ball off than I had anticipated. The serving bit was a bit of a faff for me for a while, but I’m nearly professional quality at that now. I will accept that I’m not of an Olympic standard yet (although having checked, squash isn’t in the Olympics which seems an omission to me) but maybe in a few weeks.

I read on Wikipedia that there are four main types of player which are power players, shotmakers, retrievers and attritional players. I felt like a retriever for the first part of the session collecting the ball from where I had missed hitting it when it went flying by me, although I suspect in a different meaning of the word. I also looked up what the technical word for the ball was in squash, and I’ve discovered that it’s “ball”. I had expected something a little more decadent.

All told, I rather enjoyed the whole experience, although writing this a few hours on, my ankles aren’t perhaps as sympathetic to the whole arrangement as I am. They seem to be a bit sore, but I’m not sure I’ve given my ankles such exercise before. I shall be going back next week, partly because I’ve now spent £20 on shoes but also because it was quite an interesting little adventure. It’s exhausting, but it has the advantage over long distance walking that it’s only very tiring for a relatively short period of time….

Since I’m back in Norwich for what feels like months (it’ll be nearly two weeks) I thought that I’d pop into a few pubs in the city to see how they’re getting on. This is the Adnams owned Rumsey Wells pub on St. Andrew’s Street in the city that I haven’t been to for a couple of years.

The beer selection was very orientated towards Adnams and I liked the engagement from the staff member who was pro-actively offering samples. Adnams have clearly decided they can’t be bothered with listing their new beers on Untappd, which to me is usually a sign they’re worried about their poor quality. They might disagree with me on that (or more likely be entirely uninterested in what I think), but it’s a slight red flag to me. I went for the Raspberry Scotch Ale which was mediocre but tolerable, so I can see their point. It was well-kept though and I liked the enthusiasm from the pub.

I visited on a Tuesday afternoon so it’s not surprising that it was quiet, although there were a few customers dotted about in another part of the pub. The pub is designed, at least in part, to appeal to students and they cater for that market well, although they could perhaps do with a few more on-trend beer options as well and maybe more guest beers as the choice is currently very Adnams dominated.

There we go, the photo I couldn’t upload to Untappd as the beer wasn’t listed….. It’s the Raspberry Scotch Ale from Adnams, which wasn’t exactly packed with flavour.

Anyway, as a pub, this is a perfectly clean and comfortable environment. They serve Pieminister pies, which are a handy way for a pub to offer some food without making a major commitment to expensive chefs and kitchens. The reviews for the pub are broadly reasonable positive and I can see why given how friendly the staff are. I’m not sure that I’d recommend that anyone makes a special trip here, but I like the friendliness of the welcome, which to me is an important consideration. Someone on TripAdvisor recently wrote that this was a “solid” pub, and that seems a fair assessment.