If I search ‘Tower Bridge Road’ in the photos app on my phone, there is an eclectic array of imagery. I have pictures taken at Manze’s, including a couple of my editor looking mournfully down at his first ever plate of pie and mash from the time I chaperoned him there.
Others depict a night out on the glass-floored space at the top of Tower Bridge. There are shots of DJs, dancing and two women in a lift wearing glitter ball helmets as if disco-ready knights of the realm. And then there is a solitary, sad photograph from Bermondsey Arts Club, a subterranean bar hardly mentioned by anyone, ever.
I remember when bars started opening in abandoned public toilets around London. A novel and irreverent idea, no? When I lived next to Clapham Common, I used to visit WC occasionally for nondescript Italian wines and charcuterie; I once went to Ladies & Gents in Kentish Town with a doctor who believed in ghosts.
Also read: London's top bars in old public toilets
I’d not been to Bermondsey Arts Club until the other month. Not sure why. The Instagram page filled me with hope and offered promise: sleek looking drinks as chic as any anywhere. A 3.30am licence. These in a former lavatory that probably witnessed its fair share of murders before it was bleached into oblivion.
Still with a clinical, sanitised smell, the place feels eerie. There’s a shrub-laden smoking area, an island between meandering roads. Street lamps above bring a light that is fuzzy. To begin with, my pal and I were there alone, in an expansive space of white tiled walls, dim lights and a black and white chequered floor. Lights were low, so too the tables and shabby banquettes. If the pastiche is art deco, we were in the 1930s, money spent and the depression in situ. Heating was non-existent.
Drinks? Fine. Cocktails made with knowledge and enough precision to satisfy. They must be liked because other drinkers started filtering in as the night progressed. But the place needs to liven up. Where’s the novelty gone? It’s any other drinking convenience right now.
102a Tower Bridge Road, SE1, bermondseyartsclub.co.uk
Bar snacks
Setlist
Somerset House, WC2, setlistlondon.com
A new food and drink, music and arts venue is to open at Somerset House in May, launching as part of the venue’s 25th anniversary year. Called Setlist and situated on the rooftop bar and terrace above the Thames, the concept has been designed to champion new and emerging creators, celebrating the best of London culture, from DJs to artists, poets to female chefs. Expect interesting wines and menus from the likes of Opeoluwa Odutayo and Andrea Montes Renaud.
Sally Abé at The Bull Charlbury
Charlbury, Oxfordshire, thebullcharlbury.com
Let’s face it, the Cotswolds is essentially London-by-farm. And so here we bring you news from the Bull Charlbury — part of the Public House group (Canteen, Hero, Fat Badger) — and its new head of food, Sally Abé. The move follows her departure from the Pem at the Conrad London St James hotel. Abé, fresh from serving the starter at this year’s Great British Menu banquet, will lead the team and help to build on the pub’s “farm-to-fork ethos”.
