Southwark Tavern, London Bridge, London

This is a great place, good music and a good atmosphere. Always busy

Nice pub, good meeting place near to London Bridge Tube and Borough Market. Service is pretty slow though.

Great location on the corner opposite Brindisa. Good selection of beers but avoid the food as it's very patchy and can be just awful.

Recomended for a drink but head elsewhere for food.

Situated perfectly, on the corner of one entrance to the borough Markets, this tavern is is also a great place for warmth in the winter, and beer swigging on the street in the summer.
I've observed their pub quiz in action, underground and cosy on wee stools, and it looks like a great laugh. I love the pokey, nook and cranny style layout of this venue, as it easily lends you to imaginative daydreams of London 300 years back.

One of my favourite London bars and been many times. Love the little cellars downstairs and the mix of office workers and locals, I even saw Trigger in here one evening! Good selection of beers and some pub games to play. Only thing stopping it getting a 5 is that on a Thurs and Fri night can be a nightmare getting to the bat as so busy. A must visit though.

I do love this place with its eclectic mix of people and the vast array of unusual premium beers and ciders.

The reviews below say it well!

Dozens of nooks and crannies, with exposed brickwork aplenty at this lovely pub adjacent to Borough market. Here's eight good reasons to venture down on a Saturday:

- Open from 10am serving breakfast and beer
- Gourmet Sausages and mash served all day
- Five secret booths to escape the hustle and bustle of the market
- DJs from 8pm
- 21 ice cold draught beers and 18 ciders
- Gorgeous home-made burgers
- Both bars open all day
- Open til 1am

Need any further convincing? Thought not, just best get there early as devout locals jostle for position.

Recently spruced up bar right next to Borough Market. Food come very well reccomended. The cells downstairs are a great addition to what is an awesome pub.

The real highlight of this traditional stylee pub is the basement area where the old cells have been converted into booths. Very cosy! The food is good, although a bit pricey and not very quick to get to you. A good selection of beers at above average prices.

I think the other reviewer encapsulated it perfectly in saying 'a good bar when it’s not too busy’.

On the plus side, it feels like a traditional pub, with lots of wood and an island counter at ground level. There are plenty of chairs and tables (more on this later) and they serve real ale, which seems well enough kept - I suspect turnover is pretty fast, which helps. Not a bad choice of beers, either.

The downside is that it gets horribly busy in the period after work, between 5pm and 7pm. It became a bit of a squash to move about and I found groups of people getting quite territorial 'saving’ chairs for friends who didn’t turn up for half an hour, that sort of thing: we’ve all done it, I suspect, but when it’s this busy and their friends haven’t arrived, I’d be embarrassed to bag the furniture for this long. Service also slowed up somewhat at the bar.

My real disappointment was, however, with the food. They didn’t have my first two choices, so my third choice was chicken salad with avocado. The chicken was a bit tough, but OK, but worst was the avocado: it was clearly not ripe, and had the texture of hard rubber. You couldn’t cut it, never mind eat it. Not good enough for £7.

It was also slow arriving, but they warned me about that. I would have complained at the time, but it was so busy that it was not conducive to such a conversation, so I just cut my losses and left.

There are several other pubs around, so this wouldn’t be my first choice - and I’d eat somewhere else.

Good food, good beer (although very expensive), you could do worse than the Southwark Tavern.

The booths downstairs are a nice place for a catch up if you can get one.

The bar is split over two floors and overlooks one corner of Borough Market.

The Southwark Tavern is an unusual but popular bar on the edge of Borough Market.

They serve decent beers, including Budvar, Staropramen, and Früli, plus an interesting range of bottled beers. Upstairs can feel a little cramped, as there is not much seating or standing area, and it always seems to be pretty full even early on in the week. It can take a while to get served at the bar.

Downstairs there are some larger tables, and also a series of what seems like prison cells! Each one of these cells has a table and seating for about 8 people, which can be a lot of fun if you are able to get one.

The food is a little expensive, but pretty good. I’ve only ordered food once on a Friday lunchtime, and it took over 45 minutes to arrive, although we were warned that this would be the case beforehand.

A good bar when it’s not too busy.