“It’s coming home, it’s coming. Football’s coming home”
screamed the bare chested Pompey fans as I left the Fawcett Arms tonight, armed with huge Chinese meal for one from the Golden Horse and sixteen aspirin.
Any sensible person would have popped in the Beer Guide pub (Lawrence Arms) or recent GBG entry while waiting for their pork balls.
I succumbed to the lure of the place next door.
Not because of the Cask Marque sticker, or the Pub Galore reviews. But because it sometimes pays to explore what’s on your doorstep.
Just another Southsea street corner boozer with local lads playing pool, and warm Doom Bar, presumably ?
Apparently not. A beer range that would have guaranteed Pub of the Season 20 year ago.
But surely it’ll be rubbish ?
Somehow it was superb, as tasty a pint as I’ve had since the brewery tap in Burslem last year.
In fact, it got better and better, rising to a crescendo of NBSS 4 as they played Scooter’s “Jumping All Over The World”.
A cert for the Beer Guide, in any civilized world.
Definitely one for Portsmouth CAMRA to revisit in a sea of good pubs.
retiredmartin 
Portsmouth that good?
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Really good pubs. A tendency for Beer Guide to go for the modern “craft diner” places (Brewhouse & Kitchen, Homebrew & Spew etc). But a must visit if you haven’t.
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“rising to a crescendo of NBSS 4′ –Loved this line! I really will have to try this Plum Porter someday, I’m getting thirsty just looking at the photos.
When I was in Macclesfield my friend and I went to get carry out from an Indian place and, while waiting for the order to be filled, nipped into the pub across the street. Perhaps pubs and take away restaurants have a symbiotic relationship.
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“I really will have to try this Plum Porter someday,”
Me too (note; no hashtag so not THAT me too). 🙂
Can’t find a decent Stout/Porter in my vicinity. Mind you that could be due to changing tastes as I get older (?). Used to be a big Guinness fan but not so much these days.
Cheers
* – with that being said I have found Stouts/Porters I like. A bit biased but my youngest brewed a wicked seasonal Imperial Stout in Edmonton two years ago at the brewpub where he is head brew master. Went down like candy but it was 11 or 12%!
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Hard to describe (someone will have a go) but Plum Porter is really NOTHING like your old style Porter ir Stout.
Quite an individual taste. If course, read CAMRA Discourse (their forum) and you’ll be told it’s a novelty beer made of cheap ingredients (like water, I guess).
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Well, where else would you wait ? In the seats in the takeaway ? 😉
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“But because it sometimes pays to explore what’s on your doorstep.”
Says it all right there.
Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. (and it literally is right next door according to Streetview) 🙂
Looks like you ‘lucked’* out there!
Cheers
* – that’s supposed to be a joke based on Chinese takeaway (i.e. ‘luck’) 😉
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I haven’t stopped laughing 😁😁😁😁
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Proper pub, that.
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Good find. Sounds like yet another trip to Southsea might be in the offing in the 18/19 beer season.
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I guarantee that one won’t bevin the Guide (famous last words) but 3 new ones selling Irving or Wild Weather in an open plan diner will be.
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I can’t think why I passed this place by when I was down there, The Lawrence was good though, loads of proper pubs in Pompey/Southsea.
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There’s a lot of pubs and the What Pub entry says Doom Bar ?
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That’s the way it was and probably still is in many, but I have noticed a vast improvement in beer availability and quality in the area over the last couple of years, it can only make a proper pub more proper,
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I didn’t mean availability of Doom Bar but beer choice, I wish you could edit these bloody comments.
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So do I 😁
Beers from Hop Back, Woodfordes, Irving and Titanic (no Doom). Would love to know how much they sell and whether I got lucky with my Plum Porter. I reckon real ale volumes down significantly in last 20 years, and not just because of the smoking ban.
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If you got Chinese take-away, shouldn’t it have been 16 antacid tablets?
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I don’t have ants, Dan.
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So you have asps then?
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Oh yeah, Beer Guide asp, National Rail asp, all of them.
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This post brings back some memories, I spent my three university years in Portsmouth and Southsea from 1971 to1974. One of my flatmates got really excited about the nascent Camra, spending too much time in the 5th Hants Volunteer Arms at the end of our road, waxing lyrical about the Gales beer. I didn’t get this as , being a Mancunian , we had no shortage of good beer from good local breweries and I could not see the point.
In hindsight I didn’t appreciate the wealth of pubs that the area had, although priorities tended to be the presence of the opposite sex rather than a good lacings on a summer IPA.
We did visit many of them though, often on the same night!. The Polytechnic ran a three legged pub crawl in rag week with 30 pubs on the list;it was obligatory for both to drink a half in each pub. Those were the days, I finished it twice. I can see still see the total chaos in the Duncan Inn, a street corner local, on Duncan Road, Southsea that was approximately in the middle of the circuit with dozens of bladdered students half and half out of the toilets. The next year the Landlord was not keen on particpating again.
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It didn’t sound much different from my guest room 10 yards from the Phoenix last night, students in the street till 2am ! The Phoenix is still the standout pub from a large selection.
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Sorry, it was the Phoenix on Duncan Road, not the Duncan. Just checked and its still there. We lived for a year at number 44 Duncan Road.
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Bit of trivia for you: in 1974 Ken Russell made the film Tommy locally, the pinball wizard scene was filmed in the Kings Theatre, Albert road. , 2 days to film a 5 minute sequence complete with people getting a Townshead guitar on the head during the stage invasion. We all got £4 a day as extras and a free ticket to a private Who concert at the Guildhall, one of the great live bands at the top of their game!
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You won ! There’s a lot of 70s rock memorabilia knocking about in Pompey.
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That’s one beautiful looking pub Martin – and an absolute bonus that it has quality real ales (not to mention the free meat raffle – though I think that clinches it…)
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I like how the Chinese restaurant actually says Golden Horse in the Chinese lettering. 🙂
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That’s a lovely looking Chinese place, now I look again. Also very colourful inside.
Meal for 1 was £9 – pork balls, chicken chops suey, special rice, spring roll and prawn cracker. No horse.
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The Fawcett Arms was a Whitbread pub last time I was there and I expect it might still have “Brickwood & Co” on the front of the pub in the same lettering as “stout and porter”
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