Borough pubs

Pub owners, when they get the Vision Thing, are only marginally less scary than politicians. In this particular instance, whatever cabal of madmen run the Blue Eyed Maid decided that it could be turned into a one-stop-shop for the traditional night on the town. Need a pub that you can drowse away an afternoon in while reading the paper? Need an Indian restaurant to fill you to your neck with no-nonsense curry? Need a pre-club boozer where you can stand around eying up the birds to inane booming music? Need a nightclub venue with a big screen, a dancefloor and a licence until 4 in the morning so you can stagger round getting lary with lots of firemen and nurses? No problem – welcome to the Blue Eyed Maid, a pub that has sacrificed everything to bring you everything, a curious mess of an experience that’s not quite one thing or another, and mostly an atmospheric void until 10 at night, when the high heels and suits start arriving. A swift note of caution – the toilets reminded me rather too forcefully of Samuel Pepys’ complaint in his diary about his neighbour’s gong-pit, which one day exploded and overflowed into Pepys’ basement. You can smell them before you reach them: always a bad sign. One of the finest examples of a traditional coaching inn left in London, its beautiful galleried architecture has attracted the attention of the National Trust who now own the building. The plaque in the courtyard mentions that the original inn on this site was frequented by none other than a certain William Shakespeare, a claim to fame which makes the place very popular with tourists. The original inn burned down in the great Southwark fire and was subsequently rebuilt in 1677. Inside, the myriad of interconnected wood-panelled rooms are evocative of the days when men wore silly wigs and the women wore frilly skirts. Some rooms are available for private hire thus enabling inebriated office workers to relive those days. On barmy summer evenings the fun spills out into the courtyard. On our visit, the place was buzzing with a bizarre mixture of lunching businessmen and aussie tourists looking for a kind of culture not normally found in their native country. The beer is excellent; a good choice of ales and lagers can be found at the bar. A bit of a find. Among the lesser known facts about the Grand Old Man were that he used to flagellate himself with a 9ft bullwhip before going to bed, and that he used to secretly visit prostitutes in an attempt to persuade them of “the errors of their ways�. The pub bearing his name is no less dull, boasting men in the ladies’ loos (“Well, this is a gay bar, don’t you know?�), monster lock-ins and a cheerfully inclusive, non-judgemental and non-bitchy atmosphere. Fabulously eccentric architecture both inside and out, looking like a large ellipsoidal growth bulging out from one of the railway pillars. High ceilings, odd-shaped rooms, and a general bizarreness of atmosphere provide something a little bit out of the ordinary. Some real ales. Open 11-6 on Saturday, and not at all on Sunday. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? The Market Porter is so much more than it seems. A corner pub of the highest order. It looks impressive with its hanging flowers and is very welcoming. When you enter the pub you are met with 11 different real ales from all over the kingdom. The wooden floor and barrel ends add to the basic boozer effect but this pub oozes appeal. As you stand outside, as seems the norm, the view of the Victorian Borough Market must be one of London's hidden treasures. The whole world seems to go by this pub and with such a collection of quality real ales to help you watch it all happen this is one of London's finest. Opens at 6.30 in the morning, just ripe for the early bird alcoholic. A slight refit has not detracted from the shambling glory of the inside of this pub, although the giant Stalinesque urinal, completely unique at least in the experience of this reviewer, has sadly been removed. Lurking photogenically under the railway arches, this is a hugely impressive establishment, with a vast and ever-changing selection of independent beer, and a TV for those with a severe attention deficit or very boring friends. This rather unlovely building falls in the wake of Guy's Hospital much like crumpled cigarette packets do behind a Canning Town teenager. Squat and prosaic, having no link whatsoever to millers or Mansfield, it looks somewhat uninviting. One can enter early on a Friday evening and find it dead, the jukebox echoing mournfully to itself and tumbleweed rolling between the tables. Then, all of a sudden, a shift will end at the hospital, or a set of lectures finish, and the whole place will fill up in seconds with doctors, nurses and medical students. Behind the rather forbidding exterior lies a cheerful pub, decked out in traditional Edwardian colours and wooden panels, with quite a large floor area generously covered by tables. A series of patio doors open in summer to allow the rain and smog to enter, it has a television and does food, which you are summoned to collect by a black plastic lump that sits on your table and is meant to vibrate, but which never does because the batteries don't work. Modest but fun. A garishly painted statue of the King himself (Henry VIII, on this occasion) stands on a plinth up on the second storey, looking out over the seven feet or so that separates him from the opposite building. Squeezed down a narrow side street, this Late Victorian boozer is properly messy, looking like no-one's paid it the slightest attention in half a century or more. This provides an excellent, lived-in feel; regulars moulder away in the corners or by the bar, while newcomers clutter up the cobbles outside, providing fodder for the occasional ambulance inching down the road. Good selection of beer, food (occasionally) and an interesting arrangement whereby a television is propped over the old dray gate so people can watch the football in the street. It doesn’t look much. The pub can best be described as a tiny room, not much bigger than my lounge, spartanly decorated with a bar at one end with an overspill covered area off to one side. There were probably only twenty people crammed into this confined space, some drinking and others waiting to get served, but it still felt full. The main attraction of this place is the exotic beer which hails from such diverse places as America, Belgium and Germany and as had been promised, this was fantastic. Unfortunately it came at a price: £30 for a round of 4 pints and then the hangover the next morning after consuming 3 pints of 7% beer. Tabard Street is most famous for having once been home to the Tabard Inn, where Chaucer's pilgrims first met before heading off to Canterbury. With a surprising lack of sentimentality, the Victorians pulled it down and a hideous brown office now squats in its stead, at the time of writing home to an 'IT Solutions' firm. Heading further down the street, its successor certainly makes up in beer what it loses in history. A rather pleasant nineteenth-century boozer known for the occasional lock-in, it is owned by the Harvey's brewery. This means that an insane cornucopia of beer is on offer: bitters, ales, milds, stouts and porters, both on tap and in bottles. I settled myself down next to a long haired, bearded man who was apparently "just leaving" (he didn't) and soon found myself trapped in a deeply scary conversation about beer. Divested of my senses by several pints of porter, I foolishly agreed to the loon's suggestion to try "Imperial Double Extra Stout", which he claimed he couldn't decide whether to like or hate. Upon asking for this at the bar, the barman dusted down and then uncorked a porcelain bottle and poured out a glass of what can only be described as radioactive sludge. This, apparently, used to be brewed for Russian soldiers to drink back in the days of the Tsars. I can only conclude that they had much, much stronger stomachs than I have. Tasting a little like alcoholic tar, I managed to force down half the bottle, at which point I grew violently nauseous and the pub began to swing around me in a most alarming manner. Despite the exhortation of the loon that I should follow this up with a glass of Elizabethan ale, I decided to leave, lurching down the street as the Sellafield sludge slurped and bubbled inside me. It would be another week before I could bear to touch alcohol again. Walking past this pub in the morning, all that can be seen of the front is a very unpromising lacklustre brown-tiled thing, whereas in truth this is an excellent multilayered modern boozer. One of its principal attractions is a cosy downstairs lounge, beyond which is a semicircular series of brick cells, each large enough to accommodate six or so people, and some of which contain their own private televisions (terrestrial channels only). Back upstairs in the airy bar region, an almost infinite range of fancy foreign lagers is served on tap, plus several real ales and a good but pricy food option. Occasionally descends into DJ heaven/hell, but, despite the swarms of people buzzing around it, the whole vibe is usually laid back and open enough to attract a very diverse clientele. A splendid example of how to do this whole contemporary cool business. This long and narrow pub has a historic olde worldy look, but has a youthful feel to it. I can’t quite put my finger on it at first but then I realise the upstairs is a youth hostel; ideal for those times when you are just too drunk to attempt the journey home. The place is popular with backpackers (mostly Aussies, Kiwis etc) and regularly hosts theme nights and big screen sports. Pool table. A throwback to the 1970s pub experience, photogenically squatting (in a gangster flick kinda way) at the bottom of a blackened brick building at the edge of Borough Market. The walls are decked in fake wooden strips and a profusion of brown surfaces lead to a feeling of hairiness and a need to grow sideburns. Nicely laid back – if smoky – atmosphere, cheerful bar staff and various Young’s beers etc. makes a good alternative to the always-rammed Market Porter.

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