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When the Coach House first opened for business in 2007, it instantly became the best pub in Chester's city centre. It did this quite simply by taking the design values of would-be exclusive bars like The Living Room and applying them to the very inclusive world of the street corner pub. And wasn't it high time we were granted a little style with our beer, without any of the snobbish self-importance of some of our trendy bars? Because the Coach House gives us style without affectation. Its owners have understood the essence of the twenty-first century pub and made it real, with considerable success.
From the outside, the Coach House is a pleasant if unremarkable city pub. There is a till at the door - I'm not sure why. Perhaps it gives the staff somewhere to stand as they wait to greet arriving customers. The main, front, room is simply furnished with tables and chairs. Some of the tables may be laid. Off to one side is a comfortable study or club room with burgundy chesterfields and ironic toby jugs. Then, at the rear, a proper dining room sees an orderly, skylit arrangement of nicely laid tables. One way or another there is a room suitable for just about anything you might like to do in a pub. Except fight.
At the hub of all this is the bar itself. Pleasant but understated, it is small. Small enough to deter people from hanging about (upright drinkers are catered for by four 'leaners' within easy distance), it is just a place to buy drinks from. There are bottles of wine, spirits with measures, hand pumps. There are, as is the modern way, no optics. The lack of keg taps is more remarkable. On my recent visit there was a choice of three guest beers - two from the house of Thwaite and one from the local Spitting Feathers brewery. There is a huge Warsteiner tap and some decent bottled beers.
There is also food - proper food. Yes, many of the usual pub grub suspects are here: sausages, fish and chips, steak pie, but you only have to take a look at the prices to see that the Coach House takes its cooking pretty seriously. At £18.50 a go (without chips) the Meat and Potato Pie is quite the most expensive pie to be had round these parts. I passed and went, instead, for something from the lunchtime menu: potato rosti topped with black pudding, bacon and egg, which set me back only £7.25. This delicious plateful featured superb raw materials and came dressed with a zesty jus and a salad, some of whose leaves had been deep fried, like Chinese seaweed. While some might argue that that's quite a lot to pay for a fry-up, I felt it was a fair price for the quality and presentation involved. It may be that this is true of the rest of the menu, too, though all I can say for now is that until I've had the pleasure, its most notable attribute is its impressively aspirational pricing.
It has always seemed to me that our Town Hall Square is not so very different from some of Europe's finer Grands Places. Broad and enclosed by stately buildings, it is a natural gathering place, a hub for the city. Yet apart from an occasional market, we make so much less use of it than our continental neighbours do theirs. Perhaps the Coach House can begin to redress this discrepancy and become the first to exploit the commercial potential of this most attractive public space.
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