The Thirsty Bear

5 Reviews on “The Thirsty Bear”

• Gaurav Tamotia

  Wanted to see the football on a Friday afternoon and found this pub a short walk from work. Across two levels with a large projector screen on the first floor. Several seating options though the much touted iPads to order were nowhere to be seen. Other than that, it was a fine experience with the pub food very very good. The portions are huge though!

  September 29, 2020, 7:04 pm

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• Kristine Diana Tsiknaki

  The Thirsty Bear usually get points for novelty, for having a beer tap and iPad system in place in each table. You can get a card from the bar to operate that and have all your orders made through your table iPad and brought over to you by the staff and pour your own beer. Personally, since we visited at lunchtime when the place was fairly empty, I just made more sense to go order at the bar like in any other pub. The menu has lots of burger option, which I am currently a huge fan of. I ordered The Morning After burger, that has cheese and pulled pork along with the beef patty and it was moist and delicious! The only issue is that it was impossible to eat it as a burger because everything was slipping out of the bun and I had to use a knife and fork. The sweet potato fries that came with us were also amazing! My friend got the crispy chicken burger which was more dry so he managed to eat it normally. I would definitely go back to try more of their burgers and they also have a lunchtime deal for some of them where you can get a burger and a drink for 10. Bargain! darcrose22albionadventures.blogspot.com

  June 27, 2015, 2:09 am

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• Gingle Lists Everything

  I’m a sucker for a bit of novelty, so when I heard about a pub where you can pull your own pints I knew I had to visit.The opportunity arose when we needed somewhere to go for a drink before going to the Grimm Tales’ second show (as wondrous as the first), as that was taking place around the corner in the Oxo Tower Wharf.At 6pm on a Tuesday evening, Thirsty Bear wasn’t exactly doing a roaring trade (where is at such a time) but I noticed quite a few tables were reserved for later. Perhaps a pub quiz? I couldn’t stay long enough to find out.Not only do they let you pour your own drinks, but they also do table service – hi-tech table service, with the purpose of taking out the annoying part of being at the bar – all the queuting and jostling for service. Here (provided you get the right table) you simply log in to the iPad on the table, scroll through all the drinks (cocktails, beer, wine), food (nachos, burgers, chips etc), snacks and even cigarettes and make your selection. Then you sit back and wait for it to arrive. Unless you want tap water, in which case, it seemed you could only get that at the bar. (But why would you want tap water?)Or, if you don’t like waiting at all, you can let them know you’ll be doing your own serving, by making use of one of the taps on your table. That’s right, beer (or cider) is directly pumped to where you are sitting,from which you can have as much or as little as you like. You’re given a glass to top up as you please, and this is charged in tenths of a pint. Because I just had to try it out, just before we left I poured myself what turned out to be a third of a pint and was charged 1.20 for it. Pretty reasonably priced. The downside to this method though is that you only have a choice of Strongbow (bleugh) or Amstel.The other beers and wines on offer through the iPad are pretty decent – my friend had a Malbec and I had a glass of Picpoul. A few of us got some food – nachos looked good and other chips/breaded items were decent.The guy behind the bar was really helpful, explaining how the system works, and had endless patience when we left at the end and all wanted to pay our bar tabs separately. That’s the only thing about the system – you get one login for the table, meaning all the drinks go on one person’s tab, which could lead to some awkward bill splitting later.Without the novelty this would be just a pretty average pub, but it’s amazing how fun a bit of technology can make a normal experience. jaminaward.wixsite.com

  March 22, 2015, 7:28 pm

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• Nick Andrews

  The Thirsty Bear on Stamford Street, just by Waterloo Station, is owned and operated by the Robot Pub Group. It’s an iPad-driven pub, and the concept is simple, yet massively effective….iPad-driven beer. Check.Put your card behind the bar and pick up an iPad swipe card. Choose your table based on the beer pumps available – this includes a range of lagers, but more importantly Meantime Pale Ale.Build your own burger. Check.Enter the menu on the iPad and choose either from a selection of pre-loaded burgers or go off piste and ‘build your own’…Browse the internet. Check.Check out the latest news and reviews on http://www.hamburger-me(DOT)com from the comfort of your table by switching across the the iPad’s built in browser.Stumble out at closing time. Probably check…can’t quite remember…So let’s talk burgers, which to be honest is what you’re here for. I was invited to give their new burger recipe a once over against my five pillars of the Hamburger Me! rating system. So how did it fare?Price:’Build Your Own’ Bacon Cheeseburger 12.15BYOB 2012 Winner: Redneck Burger 11.95Presentation:The burgers are both presented on alpha male chopping boards, massive two foot long jobs that must be a good inch thick. They’re skewered from head to toe with a wooden spike (to hold the masses of toppings together), and they come with a pile of either triple cooked chips, or French Fries. Impactful presentation!Toppings:The Redneck burger comes piled with masses of bbq pulled pork (double smoked, so it has some kick to it) on top of a melted pile of cheddar, and with a really good, smokey chipotle mayo spread under the lid of the bun. Sliced dill pickles are crunchy and sweet, but the bed of frilly lettuce is a bit much for us.My ‘Build Your Own’ bacon cheeseburger was, probably fairly predictably, topped with a couple of thick rashers of great chargrilled back bacon and had melted American Cheese over the top. Underneath the same crunchy, sliced dill pickles and smokey chipotle mayo completed the ensemble.Meat:The meat in the Thirsty Bear burger is a blend of fillet, rib eye and bone marrow in a ratio of 50/40/10. I’d previously found the chef’s blend of fillet/sirloin too ‘tinny’, lacking in the beefiness that defines some of London’s great burgers, so the bone marrow is a welcome addition to mix. The patty also gets a jolly good charring on the chargrill, which I quite enjoyed, especially as the patty retained its medium rare centre. One minor point was that whilst the burger was moist, it is lacking the fat content to turn the bacon cheeseburger into my favourite kind of gushing juice monster – something the redneck burger didn’t need with its mountain of pulled pork, and chipotle mayo.Bun:Surprise bun win! The burger comes wrapped in what is effectively a bastardized rosemary Foccacia bun. That’s right, you heard me correctly, Foccacia. WTF? Yes, that’s what I thought…but it works, and really well at that. It’s made with a strong bread flour which makes it a hardy (yet still light and fluffy) bun, and the kick of rosemary is magic. It’s baked in Bermondsey especially for The Thirsty Bear, and works jolly well with the burgers.Accessories:You get a choice of French Fries or triple cooked chips with your burger, so we had a portion of each. French Fries were great – hot, salty, crisp and fluffy. Triple cooked chips were were underdone and soggy. We had a chat with the chef afterwards and he’s changed his triple cooking technique – so they are likely to be better when you get down there – if they are, let me know!Overall Rating: 8.5/10Mmm…that is a tasty burger. Maybe it was the six pints of meantime, or maybe the fact that England had just managed to scrape a penalty draw with Ukraine, but I found this is a really solid burger – that said, it wouldn’t hurt to hit a higher fat content in the patty, and a bit of work on the triple cooked chips is definitely needed, oh, and reduce or get rid of the lettuce in the Redneck… A really solid burger and one I’m sure you’ll enjoy. And of course where else in London is there a pub where you can you pour your own pints using a tap on your table, order your food from iPads AND use it to call your waitress to bring you bourbon from the bar?! Go. I am convinced you’ll love it! hamburger-me.com

  December 25, 2014, 8:40 pm

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• Charlotte Barrett

  On the outside, this is a seemingly normal, bog standard London Bar. Well, my friends, you could not be more wrong. This is the brand new era of pubs. It is innovative, futuristic and tasty.When you enter, you set up a tab at the bar (you can spilt the final bill between multiple cards) and you will be presented with a white credit card type thing. Go up the stairs and you be greeted with an eastern American, preppy style sport bar with a long curved bar, two huge projector screens and several TV screens. Oh you might also notice the IPads growing from the centre of the tables and the beer taps at the end of every table! Thats right,read that last sentence again. Each table has an iPad, where you can order food on a specially designed touch pad program, order drinks, get the attention of the staff, add music to the electronic jukebox and even browse twitter, Facebook and YouTube! All the staff have an iPhone strapped to their arm so everyone you make an order, it sends the order to the phone and they will bring the order to your table. No more queuing for Charlotte!! Oooo and yes they’re bar taps on all the tables, just pick up the glasses on the table and start pouring. It works on a kind of petrol station idea, you only pay for what you pour. It is all very very clever. The food is AMASING. In my opinion the best burgers in London. You first pick your bread, cheese, sauce, choice of fries, style of salad and toppings such as pulled pork, avocado, bacon, pretty much anything you can think of. Even choosing the main patty becomes a big problem, do you have duck? Beef? double beef? Chicken? Turkey? Venison? Veg? The list is endless. Man VS Food eat your heart out. These burger are so juicy, so tasty and ginormous. I had a massive 9 month food baby after 3 bites, so it’s so good I couldn’t stop. I was genuinely sad when it ended. If you do happen to go, gimme a shout and I’ll join you!!!

  July 24, 2013, 1:18 pm

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