My new local boozer

A new Young’s pub has opened in the development I reside in here in horrible, horrible Woolwich. This is one of the much touted improvements to the area that was supposed to have been instated within months of us moving here. We moved here almost four years ago so it is nice to see the improvements finally being delivered.

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After innumerable disappointing pints of Young’s beer at the King’s Arms in Oxford I generally feel distinctly less than thrilled about drinking in their establishments. Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to find the Dial Arch offering four real ales on draught from different brewers. I had only heard of one of them, but that is par for the course for guest beers in boozers. Their keg beer selection was quite extensive with plenty of fizzy lager options for the hard of drinking. It was nice to see the wheat beer Erdinger on offer as I am rather partial to a pint or two of the stuff. So far, so good.

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Then I made my first mistake: I ordered a pint of Addlestone’s, their draught cider. I like cider, ideally bursting with life and very slightly rancid fruit flavours; this stuff was as dull as dishwater. It tasted of perilously little and my kidneys can pass more alcoholic fluids after even a moderate night getting newscasted. This was a woefully insipid, lacklustre example of the noble cider genre.

My second mistake was ordering a pizza for lunch. The base seemed of reasonable quality, but the cheese was spectacularly characterless pap considering its hilariously high fat content. Moreover, the topping included far too many thick slices of wet tomato which resulted in the pizza being distinctly too soggy. Furthermore, its slices of pepperoni must have been made from tremendously thin slices of shoe leather baked long and hard enough to dry them out so that all trace of the feet that wore them, indeed any hint of flavour at all, had long since been incinerated.

However, my drinking chums were distinctly less hebetated by their choices of booze and claimed their lunch options were quite satisfactory, if a touch on the undemanding side. There are other positive points about the Dial Arch: children are allowed in but (joyfully) not after 8pm, if you want to risk the food it is possible to book on their website and finally there is a decent amount of seating including some snug corners to hide in. Consequently, this boozer is not sub-interest. Eating there might not be my first choice (although I do fancy trying their bar snacks and their pies, I love pies), yet I feel its range of beers could tempt me back for an occasional pint or two. I like an occasional pint or two. With the arrival of [link2post id=”413″]banh mi in Woolwich[/link2post] and now a boozer less themed on stabbing than most in the area perhaps one day in the distant future Woolwich residents may not be quite so appalled when they contemplate the locality they have chosen as home.


Contact details: The Dial Arch, Major Draper Street, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, SE18 6GH. Telephone 020 3130 0700.

[map:http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=SE18+6GH&sll=51.490197,0.066972&sspn=0.010408,0.021844&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=London+SE18+6GH,+United+Kingdom&ll=51.490269,0.067034&spn=0.010741,0.021844&t=h&z=14&amp]

* Those of a historical bent might be interested to know the boozer is on the site where the Arsenal football team was founded, being named after the Royal Arsenal (at that time the biggest weapons factory in Europe) where they were based.