214 Bermondsey

I do love gin and the discovery of such a great local gin bar as this is possibly going to be the end of both my bank account and my major organs. The bar is underneath the lovely Antico restaurant on Bermondsey Street (just go in the front door of the restaurant and then immediately down the stairs on your left). It is a cosy place with seats either at the bar or in the main area. There are many familiar and not so familiar gins available and the staff are well versed to be able to advise which you may like to try that would suit your palate. A favourite of mine are the gin flights, where you get three gins and tasting notes, and have to guess which is which — quite fun if you’re in a group and competitive! Another great feature is the Sunday Social where there are great offers on G&Ts, cocktails and a gin flight all day Sunday.

Came downstairs after a meal at antico. Wish we just came downstairs. There were bar bites that were almost the exact same things we offered upstairs but much cheaper. Looked through the cocktails but didn’t see a particular one that caught our fancy so we ordered the taste of London gin tasting. What a treat.
It was delivered with three gins, homemade tonic water, and ice. Each gin had a description and after tasting you were meant to guess which one was which. All three were «exotic» gins that one probably doesn’t find every day or have at home.
After a few sips of each it was obvious which one was which. We opened he envelope to see if our guesses were right, and they were.
Overall a fun experience but at £17 for three gins we only stayed for one. I recommend coming early as the place filled up quite quickly on a Friday night after ten pm.
I wish I remembered the gins!

My day job is based between London Bridge and Tower Bridge — so obviously I had to find the nearest gin bar to take my colleagues to, which turned out to be around the corner on Bermondsey Street — 214 Bermondsey to be precise.
The bar is tucked under Antico restaurant on Bermondsey street. Not only do they love gin — they make their own tonic water!
What I was keen to do is introduce my non gin drinking colleagues to something they might like. This is where a large gin selection comes in handy, tasting flights of gin help too…
We started off with a Tour of London gin flight. You get three different gins from around London and a bottle of tonic to top up after trying them neat (naturally! Luckily my colleagues were up for this!)
You are meant to try the gins and then guess which is which from the list. When you’ve made your choice you open the envelope and see if you were right!
These are the ones we had in our London flight: Half Hitch, which is made down the road from me (we tried it last year at the Oliver Conquest gin tasting), Little Bird made in Peckham, and Moonshine Kid Dog’s Nose made in Bethnal Green.
We got the last two the wrong way round, but the Half Hitch was easy to find with its Bergamot notes and tinge of colour from the tea.
Next up was Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition, where we fared better with three out of three correct! This included one of my favourites, Gin Mare, from the Costa Dorada made with Mediterranean herbs and olives, Larios 12 from Malaga orange citrus heavy and the secret blend of Xoriguer Mahon from Menorca, which is aged in oak.
For those less interested in gin I found out what they liked and ordered accordingly. Sean got a navy strength gin neat (he’s a whisky drinker — I would normally suggest an aged gin for them, but the Bathtub Aged was sold out!). Jerome doesn’t like tonic, so for him something spicy, Opihr and ginger ale, which went down well. I also got Sangdeep out of his Hendricks comfort zone to try Monkey 47!
They make their own tonic here — naturally darker as they soak the quinine in it to flavour, rather than using the extract. For me it’s not going to rival the FeverTree range, but it was something different — I can’t quite get over the colour though, it made picking the gin from the ginger ale very difficult!
We also grabbed some nibbles as responsible drinkers. The meat platter and bread with oil was lovely — all from Antico restaurant upstairs.
214 Bermondsey is definitely worth a visit with a fair selection of gins and lovely staff to help you choose some to try out — think I’ll be back here!

So we’d been doing the Bermondsey Beer Mile (more on that later) and decided that the girls would appreciate the opportunity to partake in a drink that wasn’t a craft beer, so we wound up here — a very nice Gin Bar, just round the corner from the main high street in Bermondsey.
Now, I’m not a gin fan, so this place was kinda wasted on me. That being said, it had a nice ambience, decent music, and the bartenders were that good balance of being nice & chatty without going too far down the «hyper smiley American customer service» route we seem to be going these days.
The gin list is monumental, and the rest of or little group got very excited at virtually everything they saw. Being a non-​gin drinker, I cheekily asked if I could get something else made up that wasn’t on the list, which happily they were able to do. So I sat down with my Old Fashioned (one of the best I’ve ever tasted) and the rest with the variety of random gins and accompaniments. Verdict all round was the drinks were brilliant, and well priced to boot. Highly recommended!

Love this underground gin bar! They have their own tonic which is really nice. We enjoyed one of the gin tastings and an additonal G&T. Quite good choice of gin. Really worth a visit :)

This place could make a gin drinker out of me! A little difficult to find but that adds to the ambience. Diverse crowd and inventive menu.

This place markets itself as a gin bar, and frankly that’s all I need to know! I was meeting some friends after work and it had just been one of those days where gin was needed (to be fair, that’s every day but you get the idea!). Now I live nearby and they work nearby so it seemed a perfect time to try it out.
Easily missable, you have to wander into the restaurant above it before you find the stairs for this basement hideaway — I love that about a bar though, it makes you feel like there’s some gem of a place worth hiding. I got there first and managed to snag a table without booking. I would say you could get maximum 30 people in this place, it’s small. But also cosy, dark red leather sofas and a ver cosmopolitan feel, I liked the intimacy of the place. Whilst waiting I of course had to sample a gin and tonic, I asked the barman for his favourite gin and he whipped out some foreign, exotic concoction that had an incredibly spiced aroma — fragrant and oriental. The drink was really good too and all for £6 or thereabouts. Personally I’m complaining at that price for this gin!
Then the friends turned up and we all settled on gin martinis. Mistake (it was a weekday). But good choice, strong and alcoholic and we asked for different kinds of gin in each round. £8−12 depending on the kind of gin might be a little speed at the top end, but we managed to ‘persuad’ the staff to let us try the more expensive ones for less. Gotta love a casual Unilocal Elite plug!
I can definitely see myself popping her a little too often after work for a quickie before going home…

This place is so cool that it makes you feel at home… it had young, old, fashionistas and the not so fashion conscious. We only managed one cocktail each before needing to head off for dinner but they were good. I liked that mine used a local gin too. The only problem is that because it is a cocktail bar drinks can take a while so just enjoy the atmosphere & strike up a convo with the person next to you.

Well i must say! What a lovely time. A gem of a place tucked away a brisk walk from London Bridge or Borough. Well made cocktails (and i care about that sort of thing) in a cosy bar filled with some of the most dependable and pleasant human beings you could ever hope to employ. I went there for a friends 40^th and was ever so impressed by the staff, it was a jumping wee place, full and lively. It seemed they had cracked the secret of employing enough people, as well as employing persons of intelligence and diligence. We barely had any wait to be served and were furnished with advice which was both helpful and ingenious. Good drink guidance, lovely nibbles (i understand they also do meals, i didn’t have one, but the breads, olives, cheeses i had were exceptionally nice, well thought out and bloody reasonable). Everything was very affordable, our drinks were delicious. It just seems like a place built by someone who appreciates a good bar. It would be lovely for a gathering, or a date, good atmosphere all round. It essentially a gin bar but has a broad range of beers on tap, wines and other bevvies, i believe they have special tasting events too. Well done them. I don’t even like gin.