The Belgian Monk: The Best Value Pub Lunch in Norwich

Before the Beer Orders of 1989, almost every British pub was tied to a brewery, and British pub food and beer made your average German beer garden seem a pinnacle of culinary variety, craft and innovation. Then the gastropub revolution happened. And, although behemoth chains still dominate the landscape, today British pub food spans the gamut from two-Michelin-star cuisine in Marlow to pallid fish and chips and salmonella korma plonked in a puddle of sticky lager. Which means the British pub lunch can be pretty much what you want it to be.

Now, there are plenty of cheap pub lunches in Blighty. Hell, at Wetherspoons, the pub chain that starts serving your friendly neighbourhood alcoholic at 9am, you can scarf 1200 calories for barely a fiver (read, if you dare, Buzzfeed’s account of what happens if you eat at Wetherspoons every day for a week.) But, normally, prices go up in a tourist-friendly city centre location. They rise again in a historic building. They rise further if the pub is independent, and can soar if the food and beers are any good.

Which is why, if you’re visiting the pretty medieval centre of Norwich – and I’d recommend you do, because it has all the charm of Brighton’s Lanes, much more history and many fewer tourists – The Belgian Monk is not only your best value pub lunch, but quite possibly your best value lunch, full-stop.

The building is over 300 years old (complete with mullioned windows). It has tables outside for summer dining. It offers 50-ish Belgian beers, most priced at £3-4, plus ciders, jenevers and a crowd-pleasing wine list. And, from Monday to Friday, at lunch (12-3) and early dinner (5.30-7), you can pick two meals from the 13-strong list for £11.90. That’s to say you can get a really good Belgian beer and a very solid lunch for under £20 for two, which, in my view, is outstanding value.

I must confess we didn’t brave the ambitious-looking à la carte, but the lunch here is pub lunch to the core. It’s a hybrid of Belgian pub food (first brought to Britain by the Belgo chain) and British pub food: wild boar sausages with bubble and squeak, moules marinières with frites, steak and beer pie, croquettes with frites, cod and chips, etc. And it’s very competently done.

It’s hard to go wrong with moules marinières, unless your mussels are rubbish or you skimp on the garlic and cream. Neither of these errors happen here. The succulent mussels are almost always local, the sauce is flavoursome, and the frites, which arrive in a sconce, are crisp and perfect for dipping. The steak and beer pie hits the umami spot, with a puff of good-but-likely-not-home-made pastry balanced on top. Accompanied by more of those great frites and sweet green frozen peas – and, yes, they should be frozen: it’s a pub – it’s extremely good.

For a small city like Norwich, the beer selection is outstanding, with a focus on higher-strength, accessible brews, plus authentic fruit beers and ciders for the ladies. The clear, well-written list includes one of only six beers brewed by Trappist monks, but sadly not a champagne-style, wild-fermented gueuze (perhaps the market won’t bear it): it’s easy to navigate even if you don’t know much about beer.

If you go, don’t miss the Gulden Draak (and don’t plan on doing much after lunch, either). With a whopping 10.5% alcohol, this is dark, sweet, winey and delicious – small wonder the English call this style a barley wine. The Petrus Dubbel Bruin is intensely flavoured and a step up from Leffe’s dubbel: bigger, chocolatier, toastier and less sweet. Don’t bother with the Blanche de Namur. It’s marketed as the best wheat beer in the world, but tastes like underpowered, cardboardy Hoegaarden. Sweet tooth? Go for the cherry beer.

And, if you’re exploring Norwich’s medieval centre, walking along the pretty Wensum River, or following the summer’s GoGo Dragons art trail – all activities I’d recommend – swing by The Belgian Monk. Come early, though: it is the best value pub lunch in Norwich, after all.