My 2 Pints
This place also features in this week’s event Nautical Farewell, so as well as knowing what being in this place is like, if you’d like to know what a night involving this place might be like, check it out. Fortunately whilst at the pub, I managed to sink the required 2 pints. Very nice they were too, so now I can write a review.
The reason the event was a Nautical farewell was because of this place. It’s a pub, that’s also a boat. Although blatantly and unashamedly a massive gimmick, this isn’t just an old dry boat they’ve bought and put some extra legs on. Credit to them, they’ve put in a tad more effort than that.
Charmingly it’s actually a working (i.e. floating) boat, pissing about on the water like a fat yellow balding man in a tyre ring with a can of beer and a donut.
There are three separate decks. You walk up straight onto the middle one. This houses the main bar, and main area for afternoon eating and drinking. Deep brown leather sofas and rich woods make it a great, cosy feeling being inside. Pretend you’re on a cruise ship watching Diana Ross and eating white tail, blue finned killer whale or something. Why not? The top deck is split into two ends (bow and stern obviously). I popped up to the bow to see what it was like, but to be honest, I prefer it in the stern – if you even sniggered, you must leave the room. You can jump up and pretend you’re driving it off. How cool is that, turns out not as cool as you think when they throw you off the starboard side.
The top decks are used for summer eating, and beer garden style drinking in the daytime, with the bottom deck being available for hire as well as opened when the top two decks are busy, and in the chillier less sea-worthy months of the year. The top decks are the general wood showroom affairs you’d expect to find, with a few tropical pot plants thrown in to make it seem like you’re sailing across the Caribbean, fishing, and living for a living instead of drinking away your sorrows in Vauxhall South London.
Very background music based (although I’m not sure, it’s hard to hear up there in the wind), smooth jazz and soul stuff. Good with food and conversation, the atmosphere encourages both. Food is reasonable, £3-4 snacks. £6-7 mains. Usual stuff, they’re not re-inventing the onion ring, but hey, it fills a hole.
Drinks are substantial… plenty of taps, as well as international bottled. Competent prices make it easy to stay, at least for a few. Which brings us to the main problem. The tide. Once it starts to rise and wrap itself around the boat, it’s like a cat’s using the remote control as a plaything. That last thing you want to do is drink, or even to have been drinking. This and the fact that once you take away the top decks, if the bottom is hired, there’s only a few tables in there. (the situation I was in, and why I had to leave after a few hours once it dropped cold).
BEER SELECTION – International bottled and taps. Range of wines and ciders too - ****
COST OF A ROUND – £12 - ***
STAFF – Not too impressionable, but keep to themselves and only give you marginally weird looks when you’re caught doing a ‘Kate Winslet’ off the front - ***
FOOD – Quality and cheap - ***
SKIRT RATIO – Again, business types after work. But get an after work party downstairs and you’re in business - **
Overall - ***
Tamesis Dock - Vauxhall - Brought to you by James Wormald -