It’s fascinating to observe the difference in a particular street when you visit at different times of the day. Our visit to Marquis of Wellington was on a wintry weekday night. It is in close proximity to many council estates and didn’t look particularly appealing with some frosty looking railway arches nearby. However, if you come back in the daytime on Saturday, you will find the famous Bermondsey Beer Mile. There are plenty of microbreweries for the ultimate craft beer pub crawl.
The Marquis of Wellington unsurprisingly offers some of the best in local craft beer including Camden Town Brewery, Southwark LPA, Horns Brewing Co and Clarkshards among others. They are also the first pub in the UK to offer Roadswill: a beer designed to be paired with street food and brewed in Bermondsey.
Each week they have the very best in British street food traders to keep the Bermondsey locals satiated including guests such as Smokin’ Lotus, The Chip Club, BearBQ and Harley Dogs.
We went along to try their in-house pizza menu. What really caught our attention were the Sunday roast beef and lamb special pizzas on the menu which we will no doubt be going back to sample. We started off with their garlic bread starters: San Marzano tomatoes & Calabrese chill and San Marzano tomatoes & spicy nduja. The tomatoes were plum and flavoursome and the San Marzano variety is widely considered the best in the world. The Calabrese chill and spicy nduja both added a strong spicy kick to the proceedings.
For the pizzas are tried: grilled aubergine & artichoke and Prosciutto Crudo, sun-blushed tomatoes & wild rocket. What really came across strongly is how fresh all the ingredients are from the pizza base to all the ingredients on top. The artichokes were packed full of flavour and added a vibrancy to the dish whilst the Prosciutto is of the highest quality. They don’t skimp on ingredients here with the whole surface of both pizzas covered with premium ingredients.
The pizzas are all made fresh to order in front of you in their open kitchen. It’s a smart move on their part having a garlic bread and pizza menu, so that they don’t need to install a full-scale kitchen set-up.
Dessert came in the form of a very sturdy cheesecake complete with three mini-scoops of vanilla ice cream. Speaking with their manager, all their ingredients are shipped from an industry supplier based in Manchester, but they in turn get everything from Sicily.
My best advice is to visit on a Saturday and combine it with a craft beer pub crawl along the Bermondsey Beer Mile.
baldwin@townfish.com