Kerfield Arms, Camberwell, SE5

Visited 17/12/25. Visited previously as the Crooked Well on 10/03/20 (was my last tick in London pre-pandemic)! Cask was Five points XPA plus Feck Less from Red Willow Brewery. Keg offering was Guinness, their own lager brewed in collab with Lost & Grounded, the previously mentioned brewery's Wanna Go to the Sun, the Siren Pils, Arbor Mosaic Pale Ale, the Verdant Psych low abv IPA, the Crafty Apple session cider and the De La Senne Witz Bio Witbier (a new one for me). This is a long rectangle running along the frontage, bare boarded with the bar counter opposite the entrance with some tall stool seating at the bar counter. Rest of the floor space is filled with regular tables and chairs, most of which were occupied by diners on my mid-evening visit. Lighting was subdued and there was a nice hum in the venue, but despite some cask ale availability it was hard to get away from the fact that this is a venue for diners, albeit I did attend mid evening, a week before Xmas so what was I expecting?

Official site of Kerfield Arms - www.thekerfieldarms.co.uk

Official site of Kerfield Arms - www.thekerfieldarms.co.uk

Originally the Kerfield Arms, this is a mid-19th century pub, situated in a gentrified Georgian back street and well described by the two previous reviewers. Visible on their website, indeed this does look like a gastrofied hotel bar, with a tiled or bare boarded floor, cream tiled modern bar back, black wainscoting then white walls with black window reveals. There’s virtually no décor apart from some odd prints of butterflies and dangly plant things. Furniture is mixed, conventional and customers were young professional types, very few in number at the time of my Saturday 9.20pm visit, when every other local pub was heaving. There’s now no cask, the two pumps doubling up as dispensers for blue kitchen towel; how bloody unattractive. I went for something American called Shipyard, which was pretty unpleasant, all the more so seeing as I had to part with $4.72 for the pleasure, though it was served by a smiley barmaid. There’s nothing here for the serious pubgoer, me agreeing with Moby and Alan that this is now more restaurant than pub, though with the possible exception of food, it’s better than the hugely overrated Camberwell Arms.

A backstreet corner pub now gentrified, leaving little of any pub character it may have once had, internally it has ore of a hotel lounge feel.Two hand pumps with just one in use, the solitary beer was Camerons Ahopalypes Now and on a blisteringly hot day the quality was struggling. Not a pub I would choose to revisit anytime soon.