Thirsty Bear, Londonback to pub details please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
Our work local and we love it. Burgers are awesome, loads of beers and ales available and stays open laaaate. Sometimes a long and tedious queue for the bar and it sometimes gets a bit crowded downstairs, but very good all round! Have woken up with many a sore head from the bear!
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Have to concur with previous posters. Gimmicky , poor ale, over priced. Leave to the tourists, city drunk workers. Nil points. The
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A pub that could have such potential is ruined by the sheer stupidity of their pricing structure.
We came in the other day and poured to pints from the tap at the table - worked out at just over a fiver for an standard lager - ridiculous, even by Londons ever decreasing standards.
I had a look at the price of standard pints at the bar along with snacks - we didnt get anything extra and soon left.
I for one will not be returning.
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The gimmick of ordering from the table is an interesting one. But £3 for two packets of crisps makes me lose all interest all of a sudden. Bye.
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I had a much more positive experience than the recent reviewers - they have Meantime Pale Ale, the service was good and the build your own burgers were excellent, both in terms of choice and quality.
The concept of ordering through the tablet is gimmicky, but only about half the tables have them, so they are not obligatory, and even if there is one on your table, you can still order from the bar. Whether or not the service is quicker than if you went to the bar yourself is hard to say; there wasn't much of a queue at the bar, but that is likely to be because most people were ordering from their tables. There was a brief wait, but I've certainly queued at bars in other pubs for longer.
Having said all that, burgers aside, it's still pretty average - not much atmosphere, possibly becuase people are just sitting at their tables, rather than milling around.
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One of those pubs, that is probably crammed to the gills with well paid city professionals and media execs during the week, so it doesn't really have to make the effort on any level. ....so it doesn't disappoint on that count!
Overpriced beer served in filthy glasses; bored inattentive, and untrained barstaff; and zip atmosphere. Not good :(
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I find it hard to understand how a pub owned and operated by a pub company can be so terrible. I called in after work for a pint and a meal. First off, of the three real ales, only one - Bombardier was "on". It was served at sub zero temperature so cold as to be undrinkable. I ordered my food and after ten minutes the barman came to my table to tell me they had run out of the ingredients for my order. A smell of low quality disinfectant from the toilets pervaded the whole pub.
Very disappointing - avoid. Shame because in it's previous life it was a decent pub.
joxer - 11 Jan 2013 14:23 |
I had a very disappointing experience at this place. I took 5 of my friends there for an evening. You can order music through an online jukebox on the table. The pub is so noisy that you can't hear any music at all other than the bases. At the end of the night I decided not to pay for the music that I ordered earlier. This apparently angered the manager hugely, and he started explaining that even though people say that customers are always right, he thinks they are never right (in other words, I am very wrong). I explained to him that I am not going to pay for a service (the music) that I didn't get. He ended up saying, then "I am not welcome here anymore". Which means, he banned me from his pub, refusing to acknowledged the fact that he shouldn't have charged me for his ridiculous music speakers which no one can hear. I brought to him a group of 6 people, and paid a total bill of over �200 and he failed to recognize that! Is this any way to do business?
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Was dragged in here last week when close to Blackfriars.
I wont review it because, as a real ale drinking traditional pub enthusiast I am clearly not the target demographic for this concept.
But, also being of an age where I've experienced IT consultants coming into the companies I've worked for, selling us the concept of the next best computing system for an extortionate fee for us only to find later that it does not deliver the efficiencies promised, its at least good to see them risking their own money for once.
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Weird place.
You order drinks from tablets on the tables, but you have to wait for a member of staff to bring you a card before even being able to look at what's available (pleasantly surprised to see a couple of ales on the list), ordering and having them brought to you. All of which takes quite a lot longer than it would have done to buy from the bar. If you want lager or cider then you can use your tab to fire up one of the taps on various tables or on the bar and pour your own. When you want to pay up you 'close' your tab and wait ten minutes for someone to come and collect your money and give you your credit card back only to find out that you have to go and pay at the till anyway. So it's a pretty gimmicky concept. On the plus side you can order food on there and build your own burger etc; you can 'buy' music for the jukebox and you can go on youtube for some reason.
Music was way too loud when we went (invalidating the 'I like to able to sit at the table and talk to my mates' comment in the glowingly positive review at the bottom of the page) and the staff were pretty rude when we asked them to turn it down, one of them saying "What's wrong with you people". Nice.
On the plus side it has a free pool table upstairs, which we spent a good long time on and there's a dart board downstairs.
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Original review I put on the Stamford Arms page.
Sad to see the Thirsty Bear has meant the demise of Conor's impeccably kept Ringwood beers. Not quite as bad as I expected but only Deuchars IPA and Bombardier available at the bar. Ordering from tables got you Heineken or Strongbow. Rather loud music, TV's gone, also the fruit machine. Nevertheless I will return sometime to see how it's getting on.
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I have been to the Thirsty Bear a few times now and would highly recommend it. There were a few teething problems as with all new places at first, but these I think are now gone. While I do not drink beer, I love being able to order a drink while I continue catting to my friends and not having to stand at the bar. Being a big fan of food, I have tasted a number of things on the menu and I have not yet been disappointed. My favourites are the tapas/sharing style dishes and the chunky chips. Good size portions. Upstairs is my preferred location where you can sit both sides of the bar!
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