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By Michael Hodges
Apart from some love and affection, good beer requires very little in the way of ingredients: water, hops, malt and yeast. Trevor Gulliver - owner of Brew Wharf, the new beer-themed bar and restaurant next door to Vinopolis in Borough Market - named his own ingredients for success on opening in October as: 'Good location, strong atmosphere, a sense of place and good ale brewed on site.'
You'll notice he didn't include food in his list, and with due reason; it really isn't up to scratch. Luckily for Gulliver, the whole endeavour is saved by the beer - or rather two beers - the bitter and best bitter brewed in Brew Wharf's on-site microbrewery (installed with the assistance of the well-regarded Greenwich Meantime Brewery). The bitter (£2.80 per pint) is perhaps over-hopped, making it a little flat and oily, but the best (also £2.80) is a triumph of the art. Clear and lively, again it's hoppy but balanced and strong enough to cut through the food.
And it needs to be. Loosely themed around the northern European beer-hall tradition, almost every dish is wrong - choucroute an unhappy splodge of cabbage, with an overcooked sausage that came without mustard; roasted pork belly stringy and on a bed of lentils in a congealed gravy that tasted like Bisto. The cheeses (all British) were just about ripe, but so cold they were hard to enjoy; a raspberry sorbet came already melting alongside a dried-out chocolate tart.
Yet the beer saved the day again. A bottled chocolate ale from Meantime (£3.50) was rich without being sugary, dark without being burnt - an antidote to the unhappy chocolate tart. The same brewery's India Pale Ale (£3.50) delivered a truly tangy taste that cheered up the cheese and took our mind off the grating handbag house piped through the place to encourage, presumably, Gulliver's 'strong atmosphere'. Anyway, a bad restaurant with very good beer.
Time Out London Issue 1844: December 21 2005 - January 4 2006
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The beer is good and interesting to try. The food is expensive for what it is - I would drink there and eat somewhere else. The waiter managed to tip a pint of beer over me on a recent visit. He apologised but it would have been a nice gesture to, for instance, not charge for our drinks, or something like that.
I recently visited Brew Wharf as part of a group of 16.
Despite some of the reviews I've read, we all had nice enough meals, no culinary delights mind you, but very tasty with good portion sizes.
The beer selection is awesome, although I was a little disappointed they didn't have either of the beers they brew themselves!!
The atmosphere is not exactly a party one, but if you actually want to catch up with people and be able to talk, whilst enjoying many, many different beers, a good selection of wine, and some reasonable food, this is the place.