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london pubs

Posh Boozers in South London

florence_beer

We planned the route for our long walk from Liverpool Street (in the City of London) to Herne Hill (way down south) so that we would pass a couple of pubs we’d been meaning to visit for a while.

Walking through Camberwell, we both had a flashback to a birthday party we’d attended there in around 2003, in a pub called the Grove, and detoured to find it. Just as we remembered, it was nicely set up and absolutely huge. Of particular note: you can hire the lounge style back room, complete with beer fridge, dart board and Nintendo Wii for private parties. The Young’s Bitter was spot on, if you like that sort of thing (we do).

Our next stop was Hooper’s Bar, which took us a while to find. From the outside, it looks great, being beautifully maintained and covered in antique brewery signs. Through the window, we spotted a tantalising range of beers on offer. Sadly, it doesn’t open until four on Sundays. We should have checked. Recovering from momentary despair, we carried on towards Herne Hill and the Florence.

The Florence is one of London’s few brewpubs and we are by no means the first to offer an opinion. We were expecting great things of a pub which both Jeff and Tyson liked — could this be the Promised Pub? After a couple of pints and a bit of food, however, we were left unable to agree a corporate line.

Boak liked the atmosphere and thought it was the kind of place she could settle in for the afternoon.

Bailey was confused by the weird mix of waiter and bar service and had yet another flashback, this time to the would-be trendy bar-lounge-concept drinking holes of 2003.

We both thought the food was fabulous, albeit with the caveat that, given everyone wants chips with battered fish, why not just include them as standard and charge a tenner outright? We also both agreed, after a stale Meantime Pale Ale and a pint of own-brewed bitter that compared poorly to the pint of Young’s we’d had an hour before, that the beer was nothing special.

4 replies on “Posh Boozers in South London”

Yeah, I was bemused by being sent back to my seat by the barman to await the waitress who would take my food order when the pub contained just the three of us.

I thought Weasel was gorgeous, mind.

We didn’t get Weasel (despite the beer mat). We had Stoat, or Ferret or Vole or some such.

We’ve been to Hoopers several times over the past year or two – it’s not our part of London but we’ve always enjoyed our visits – Jamie is a friendly landlord and keen to please – and it’s a pleasant place to spend an afternoon.

They’ve had a good choice of beers on most of my visits and they’ve always been well kept. No complaints there.

The food is good although the portions are possibly a bit on the wee side for me and it was annoying that the food was were served on stone cold plates.

The opening hours on weekend afternoons are not great as you found. Another place to try in this general neck of the woods is the Gowlett – has 2 cask ales and great pizzas (although it can get rather full of parents and their young kids tucking into the pizzas).

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