Pub reviews

I have a couple of Italian friends staying who want to try a good local pub. Looking at the Reviews section of this website I am disappointed how few reviews there are, and how out-of-date many of them are. The 'obvious' well-known ones are often too crowded to be enjoyable.

With some charging £3.50 or more a pint, and £10 for a burger and chips, a bad pub can be an expensive mistake. If you use this website, do us all a favour and review your local/favourite pub!

I don't want to sound arsey, but one of the things I like about a good local pub is the absence of tourists and amateur drinkers. Doing as you suggest would ruin that aspect of it.

Sorry RP. I disagree, pub reviews help us all by recommending or not, pubs that we experience. a good review doesnt means you will be swamped with tourists but you might meet a few locals.
In the last few weeks i would suggest a beer or 2 in the following
the crown , blackfriars rd
HITW, just out of waterloo stn
the kings arms, just off borough high st

places I would avoid like the plague

fire station waterloo
windmill the cut
doggets blackfriars bridge

for food , we enjoyed Baltic on blackfriars but we hated livebait on the cut.

im sure that wont help many but it lets someone know at least.

"don't-likes" abound but good pubs there are a plenty
always happy to recommend: the britannia; The Roebuck and the woolpack

boroughpaul wrote:

"don't-likes" abound but good pubs there are a plenty
always happy to recommend: the britannia; The Roebuck and the woolpack

Both of those are winners. I'd put the Roebuck slightly above, if only because the Woolpack is a bit busier, and I prefer space.

Well I'm glad not everyone takes Rambling Phil's attitude, as I don't believe that some positive pub reviews will cause hoards of obnoxious "tourists and amateur drinkers" (whatever they are!) to descend on SE1. (I can just picture stereotypical wary bumpkin locals muttering "You're not from round here, are you?" when a new face dares enter 'their' pub.) If Phil really worries about such things he *could* simply have quietly kept his secret pubs to himself, instead of posting a negative response.

And anyway, are all tourists obnoxious? Aren't we also "tourists" as soon as we leave our local patch, and head for a pub in, say, Hammersmith or Hampstead? Surely if a pub review recommends the real ale and absence of a jukebox, or alternatively recommends the variety of designer lagers and loud trendy music, it will attract only the "right" sort of tourists for that particular venue? Surely it is the *lack* of reviews that will cause the wrong sort of tourists to ignorantly try out your favourite pub?

Moving on ... Thanks to those who posted more positive responses to my original query, but I still think that what we really need to make this aspect of the SE1 site useful is *reviews* (e.g. saying whether a pub is a Sky Sports pub, an old-man-with-dog pub, a city-suits pub, a child-friendly pub, or whatever), rather than just one-line opinions that will got lost in a forum thread.

Of course I can't force anyone to post reviews, so I am just appealing to your sense of community, assuming that you find this site useful, and may be willing to help make it more useful. Even if you don't want to share your favourite pub, could you at least warn the rest of us about the really terrible ones?

I read a great book on this a while back: Pubs of past and present or something, worth looking into

so we should all think of our favourite pub(s), and then go and write a review - regardless of if we've been in recently.

that sounds ok to me.

Hi,

We really like The Royal Oak on Tabard St, just off Borough High Street. Friendly bar staff, nice couple of ciders on tap and good food. Mix of locals and a few after work drinkers. Also, it's close to Simply Indian, which a nice little eaterie, great food, waiters are a little surly but it's BYO, which is always good.

Ceirios

Having driven past it every day on the way home from work for 3 years, we finally tried the Duke of York on Borough Road on Friday night. What a great find! Welcoming staff, background music at a volume you can speak without shouting and plenty of beers on tap and a good wine list.....I will be back there