CityLife

Sams Chop House

Sams Chop House - warm and welcoming

LIKE an old-fashioned toff with his pin-stripe for the city and tweeds for the sticks, I enjoy different styles of pub for town and country on a chill winter’s afternoon.
 

You can’t beat a beamed Tudor inn after a rural tramp and equally there is something very atmospheric about a Dickensian-style hostelry in a frost-gripped city centre.
 

So I donned a battered top hat, tucked a fob watch into my waistcoat and headed off to that old gentleman of Manchester watering-holes, Sam’s Chop House.
 

Sam’s has been around since 1872, but only in its subterranean position on Back Pool Fold since the late 1950s.

Slightly dingy dignity

The Victorian-style décor dates from the sympathetic refurbishment in 2001 after a few years of closure, but any passing American would think it was all totally original.

Tiling, pictures and fire-places combine to construct the historic look, with the tobacco-white walls adding a slightly dingy dignity.
 

Sam’s was one of L S Lowry’s favourite pubs and was for years a place of deal-making and schmoozing for lawyers and bankers.
 

Bankers aren’t as common on the ground any more, so you are more likely to see shoppers enjoying the superb bar food, which is culled from an a la carte menu available in the compact restaurant at the back, which specialises in feelgood British tucker – all faggots and chops.
 

Toddler's head

We Wiganers call steak puddings ‘babysyeds’. Mine, which also included lambs kidneys, was more the size of a toddler’s head, and for £12.70 came with crushed peas and superb dark-brown chips.
 

Opposite was Sam’s famed corned-beef hash (£12.70). To a secret recipe – which no doubt includes lots of calories – it came moist and bursting with flavour and had crispy bacon and a dreamy, soft-poached egg on top.
 

This place – brother to Mr Thomas’s down the road – is famed for its wine list, but we were here for the beer.

It has its own Sam’s Best Bitter, made by the Coach House Brewing Company, but I preferred the Warrington brewer’s own Coachmans bitter, though there was Flowers IPA, too.
 

It is a tad pricey, but even Scrooge wouldn’t begrudge a visit here once in a while.