The Jolly Gardeners, SE11

Nice building - large open plan area. Beers were all unknown german brews (Krombacher Hell) served in large tankards (probably still a pint) for £5 a pop. Only in London.

It’s always nice to stumble across something completely unexpected, and so it was with the Jolly Gardeners (or ‘Zeitgeist’ if you must). Located down a quiet street, a short walk from Lambeth Bridge, this is a specialist German beer bar and gastro-pub. The dark exterior is a bit off-putting, but having entered, you find yourself in a smart two room pub with a large servery separating the two halves. The pub has bare floorboards throughout and the left hand side, which is the larger of the two areas thanks to the shape of the building, has plenty of, almost exclusively, high banquette and stool seating. Quite why the entire room has to have high seating, which can often be uncomfortable, is beyond me, but thankfully the right hand side of the pub has similarly styled furniture, but at normal heights. The main room has a small fireplace on the back wall and decorations include various German beer adverts and mirrors, although the German theme is generally quite understated (I spotted some German football scarves behind the bar), although I imagine that might change at other times of the day and during certain sporting events. The ceiling is nicely patterned and the bar back is worth a look, retaining a nice tile frieze around the top. A door at the back of the pub, next to an upright piano, leads out to a small patio with a few benches. There are no hand pumps in this pub, just lots and lots of German keg fonts. Beers available on my visit included offerings from the likes of Erdinger, Bitburger, Paulaner, Krombacher, Weihenstephaner and Warsteiner. I gave the Krombacher Dark a try and thought it was pretty good. All pints are charged at £4.50 and a half pint is rather confusingly £2.50. A German themed menu with more sausages and schnitzels than you could ever imagine, was displayed on most tables and seemed a bit pricier than your average pub menu. There’s more to this place than the novelty value of finding a specialist pub in an unlikely location, but I personally found the prices too steep for me to consider staying beyond the one drink. I wouldn’t mind coming back here when there’s some sport on, to see it a bit livelier, as it seems like a welcoming kind of place.

As mentioned by Michael below, this pub is also known as “Zeitgeist” (spirit of the times). The menu as well as the window bears the name Zeitgeist, but the main exterior signage is of the jolly Gardeners and the graphic depiction of the gardeners is still set in stone above the door. There are numerous German beers on draught, as well as in bottles, but no real ales. I don’t normally drink lager style beers, but my pint of Bitburger slipped down rather nicely, and at the very reasonable price of £3 a pint. I’m glad to see that the Europeanisation of this pub didn’t affect the tradition of getting a full pint in this country – the barmaid went to some effort to get a full pint in the glass. I didn’t look at the menu, but I noticed a chalkboard advertising a buffet lunch available on Wednesdays and Fridays, at £6 for all you can eat. The pub itself is an old Victorian backstreet pub, with the trademark high ceilings and cast iron pillars with elaborate capitals still in place. It’s a very black pub now – the photographs show the black painted exterior; inside the upholstery’s all black, as is the front of the bar counter, and the red painted ceiling gives it a devilish look. There are two distinct and very different rooms, joined by a narrow area at the back of the island bar. The room on the right as you look from Black Prince Rd has some standard metal-framed tables, accompanied by black upholstered benches and normal chairs. The room on the left, which contains all the beer fonts, is furnished entirely with tall black upholstered benches along the side wall, tall tables and tall stools. The benches here are particularly uncomfortable for someone whose legs aren’t long enough to reach the struts on the table, let alone the floor This is clearly a speciality destination pub, and is a must to visit for anyone who is a fan of German beers.

Randomness Guide to London - Zeitgeist At The Jolly Gardeners entry