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You’ve either been to the Bermondsey Bierkeller or you’ve been somewhere like it. A windowless temple to steins and shuffleboard, tucked away in the arches underneath London Bridge. It’s the natural habitat of corporate team-building groups, playing darts or bowling or giant Pacman. Men in gilets meet friends to watch the football before their trains back to Tunbridge Wells. When I visited on a recent Wednesday evening to sample the potato salad and ‘Ultimate German Wiener’ (my Berliner companion was unimpressed), the best way I could describe it was as a Deutsch Vegas.
It didn’t quite match up with the image of the address I’d had in my head over the past few months of researching its history. That said, the gimmicky theme and the presence of more wieners than you’d usually expect in a bar were actually quite fitting for the property. Because over the last 30 years, number 4 Tooley Street has been run by robots, hosted sexy parties, divulged human remains, and been the subject of multiple disputes, including one with the Dean of Southwark Cathedral.
‘The only restaurant gimmick I have ever seen that is worth seeing’
In the late 90s, the area around London Bridge was “pretty run-down and unloved,” says Dan Smith, who lived on nearby Weston Street from 1998 to 2003. “Each week there would be a stabbing or a mugging or something. It wasn’t a destination that people would purposefully come to.”
This wasn’t a far cry from the area’s earlier criminal history – before the 1500s, Southwark was a hub for brothels and inns, being just outside of the jurisdiction of the City of London and the last place to wait overnight for the entrance to London Bridge to open in the morning.
But towards the close of the millennium, the area’s nightlife was pretty much non-existent. The few pubs in the area opened early in the morning to serve market traders and nightshift workers, and closed early, too, staying that way on weekends. So, when Cynthia, a six-foot robot with flashing red eyes, started working at a new bar on Tooley Street in 1999, it was a real “novelty,” Smith says.
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