The Thirsty Bear

I had high hopes for this place and they were not met.
I have been past here on a number of occasions and the name always grabbed my attention, I mean come on what’s not to like about a bear drinking beer!
Anyway the opportunity arose so in I went, first impressions it a local to the business which surround it by day but one look at the tables with pumps and tablets attached and I would imagine all manner of debauchery could occur in the evening!
Back to the reality, it was lunch time and the place was very quiet myself and a couple in a distant corner. The bar staff were welcoming and helpful. They allowed me to taste 3 different ales before I had to decide which one to have with my burger. Did I mention the £10 beer & burger deal.
Once I had selected my beer and chosen my burger I took my table, sampled my beer some more and waited for the burger to arrive… Disappointment arrived with it, the chips were a greasy mess I couldn’t eat them. The burger itself was just ok, whilst it looked good, once I tucked in it lacked flavour even with the addition of mustard and ketchup it left a lot to be desired.
As a venue I think it’s great with the self service pumps in the tables. The food, well the burger & chips I had needs work. Would I try here again yes as I will have to try the pumps on a table.

The idea is cool. Ordering beers and food from your table on a touch screen is the future.
BUT
It comes at a price and the environment is not nice neither cozy. It feels cold. I wouldn’t recommend it at all.

Looking for somewhere nearby to the OXO tower for something to eat we stumbled upon The Thirsty Bear who specialise in build your own burgers. It’s not a particularly fancy place but it did us OK. My friends burger was pretty epic and after being disappointed by my lukewarm Camembert cheese I wished I’d gone for one too instead.

Absolutely epic pub/​restaurant.
The idea of being able to pull your own pints is so neat.
Brought my boyfriend for his birthday and he was so impressed.
The burgers are also absolutely delicious!
Would definitely recommend and will be going back :)

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!

Got one pint and the real ale was great but we were ignored the rest of our visit. Moving on!

Popped in for my first London Pub experience. Dry chips, unfortunately. At first I thought this was normal, then I tried some other fish/​chips and realized that I’d had a bad batch at this place. No biggie. Fast service, good atmosphere, good pour of Guinness. M experience was good. Average I suppose.

A number of us tried the Thirsty bear for lunch based on the attractive menu «selection of London’s best burgers», the video of the goldihops and the three bears challenge on youtube and our general love of burgers.
We were pretty disappointed.
Whilst the iPad ordering system is quite amusing, the wedge style fries pretty good and the service was quick, those were the only real plus points.
If you’re talking up your burgers and you’re within walking distance of Covent Garden and the foodie places over there your burgers have got to be better quality than those served to us.
We found (as a group) our buns to be quite stale, but more importantly, the burger meat itself was just not very nice. There was none of the juiciness or flavour we’d expect from a place claiming to specialise in them these days. It reminded me of what used to pass for burgers in many places years ago — a slab of flavourless dry meat.
We found that none of us actually enjoyed the burgers very much and the most notable thing about them was the size (for those who ordered the grizzly or big bear burgers).
If you want a burger I strongly suggest walking across the river and heading to MEATmarket, 5 guys, GBK etc where you’ll have a much better experience. Sadly, none of our group have the slightest intention of returning to the Thirsty Bear.
Note — I’ve edited this review to provide a bit more context, its still shorter than my other reviews as I don’t enjoy writing negative ones.

I liked this pub. I think the iPad ordering system is great. Pouring your own beer from the tap is also fun. I got a ton of foam, guess I’m not a skilled bartender. The waitress was very pleasant. She explained how everything worked and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about working there.
I didn’t order any food as the kitchen was already closed.
The place is a bit dark inside. There’s some tables downstairs and a lot more upstairs.
Overall nice place, if I were in the area I would visit again.

I actually think that the pub itself isn’t that nice. There are far nicer pubs in the area.
But the unique iPad ordering system is amazing. Just the idea of pouring yourself 0.2 of a pint and paying 40p for it is pretty great. My friend likened it to a petrol pump.
The burgers are also excellent and completely customisable, you can just tap away on your iPad and bam it’s at your table super fast.

More to this place than the old man’s pub that meets the eye! I’m talking iPads to place your order/​change the music, and taps on the tables to pour your own beers. Pretty gimmicky? Yes. Pretty damn fun? Ohhh yes!
Get a swipe card for your tab and head upstairs to get involved. Cocktails are average; beers are a better option and it’s worth checking out the selection at the bar rather than just going with whatever’s on tap at the table.
Bonus hit are the burgers which are on the pricey side at about a tenner a pop, but I minded less when it arrived on a satisfyingly thick plank of wood and looked (and tasted) pretty good!
My mate reserved the area around the upstairs pool table on a Saturday eve which was perfect for chilled birthday drinks. One of the bar staff gave him some unnecessary aggro at first when people were slow to arrive, saying he’d have to forfeit his booking — even though the upstairs bar was pretty empty at that time. They calmed down once more of us showed up though, and after that the staff were all smiles.
Worth a try for the novelty tech geek factor — you can also be cheeky with the ipads and (ab)use them for things like youtube (or live Unilocal reviewing?!). Quite enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t too rammo on a Saturday night too so hope I haven’t let the cat out of the bag too much! Probably wouldn’t make a special trip again, but I’d go back if I was in the area or to take an uninitiated friend :)

Such an unassuming place, such amazing burgers.
And you can build your own, on an iPad. Their table top ordering system is fun and easy to use and doubles as a juke box! Operates best without oily fingers.
Great place for a quite lunch with colleagues.

I was really looking forward to this meet up with my friends. The Thirsty Bear was in a perfect location as it was exactly in the middle of where we needed to be two hours in the future.
Anyway … if we can just step away from the enticing topic of my amazing self, we can discuss the pub.
First surprise on a Bank Holiday Monday … it was very empty. Why? I still don’t really know. Every table has it’s own tap with different beers and cider as well as a little screen where you can order your food. Its a nice gimmick, but its also a bit in the way and it was rather distracting as it was running advertising and … surprisingly … games. In exchange for your card you get a bar card which activates the table and allows you to draw the beer/​cider and order. Sadly when we were there they had problems with the tap. The system charged us too much, as there was air in the pipes. We had to get it reset and they had to change the barrel. The burger was great though! Really nice with big, crisp chips. Yummy.

Love this pub! — its a «robo pub» i.e. all the tables have an Ipad and you serve your own beer and order from the table.
Its a unique an idea and great for techno geeks, but you probably wouldnt want to make it your local, as you lose an aspect of the social side of ordering from the pub, but the service is great.
Had a couple of problems when I have tried to reserve areas to watch the sport so you need to keep on top of that if it is an important do.
Highly recommend the burgers!

we chose this pub for dinner based on its proximity to waterloo and i’m really glad we did!
it’s an old man boozer which has been done up with some modern day touches — ipads on the table where you can order your drinks and dinner (meaning you never have to queue at the bar!), beer taps on some of the tables so that you can pour your own beer or cider, and a huge burger menu.
i ordered a tuna loin burger with tomato, red onion, lettuce and wasabi, mayo and chilli dressing. it came with thick chunky chips (although i’m sure it said skinny fries on the menu!). for £9.95 and huge portions i really thought this was good value, plus it was delicious. tuna isn’t often an option you see on a burger menu, but when it’s done properly it’s really so very good!
my dining partners ordered a couple of build your own burgers (one of them included chorizo as an add on and it came as a whole sausage on the burger… rogue!) and they were also very happy with their choices.
the atmosphere in there on a friday evening was warm, loud and totally non pretentious. i would quite happily spend lots of time there of an evening. i think this place could be totally gimmicky, but as it keeps its old man boozer roots, it’s just a really welcoming and fun pub to be in.
not only that, but the staff were awesome. very friendly, smiley and helpful.

I’m of to minds about The Thirsty Bear. First off, I had a great time, and it was a lot of fun. That’s a plus. However, I’m sure a lot of the fun to be had was due to the company, and not necessarily the pub.
So, you can order from the table with iPads attached. That was pretty cool. You could scroll through things, order a pint, a burger, a snack or dessert, and they would deliver it to the table (although they only had two beers on cask, and it was unclear which we were getting as the iPad said all they had was Bombadier, and the cask label said something else). They even had taps you could turn on at your table and fill yourself (if you wanted Amstel or Aspall’s, which are not two things I would ever choose at a pub). You could also play songs from the jukebox for 25p a play (except you can’t really hear the jukebox, so it was a bit of a waste). However, the way the iPads are attached to the table makes it incredibly easy to think, «Oh I want a beer», and swivel it toward you, knocking over other people’s glasses at the table along the way (yes, I did it twice). Honestly, it was a tad gimmicky, and not necessarily a draw for me to want to come back.
The burgers were alright. One bonus was they came medium rare without having to ask for it that way! I’m not sure I’d go out of my way to travel here to get one. They do have ridiculous burgers though, mine had pulled pork! Someone else ordered one with a venison burger, blue cheese, and a peppercorn sauce! They also do one that’s three patties (at 8 oz each) for a total of one and a half pounds of burger. You can also attempt the Goldihops and the Three Bears challenge where you eat three of the triple burgers, drink two pints of beer, eat a double order of chips and a salad AND if you finish in an hour, it’s free! (At least I think it’s free, I wasn’t quite clear on what you actually got, the iPad screen description ended somewhere before the end and I couldn’t get it to scroll.)
I’d go back if I were in the area, or if I had friends who really wanted to go and attempt to eat one of the triple burgers or do the challenge. It’s a bit far for me to travel to have a good-​but-​not-​great burger.

You would never expect a place like this to be as tech-​friendly and modern as it is from the outside. But you can order a beer and a burger from your table off an iPad. And that. my friends, is amazing.
You walk in and are greeted with a semi-​divey hold-​in-​the-​wall type pub. Darkly lit, wood bar, some bar games littered around. The only different thing is the girl behind the bar is wearing a device on her arm like a glowing iPod. Ok.
Go up to her and get your charge card for the iPad and then, trust me on, this, you want to head upstairs. Here is where the Bear really roars. Giant screens for the games, bright lights, fast service, a completely different feel and a lot of fun.
And of course, the iPads at the table. Swipe your card and get started. You can do things like order your burgers (one of their selections or custom make your own) plus tons of different food options. You can also order drinks from here — beers, spirits, etc. OR, if you so desire, there are two taps on your table, one with beer and one with cider, and you can just pour your own. Ah-​mazing.
Even the service is good. They’re quick and make sure you’re doing OK, even though you can order from your table. Once, when they forgot to bring a beer and we reminded them, they brought it over and took it off the bill. Who does that!
Burgers are a bit pricey (usually about £8 to £12) but they’re giant and come out on a large wooden slab, which I loved. Plus, they run great specials like £10 for a regular burger, chips and a pint. What! Yes.
I really enjoyed this place and was surprised by all the win. Check it out, totally worth it.

I think this bar is really great, and has a lovely atmosphere.
The burgers are a bit pricey, but weren’t half bad! I don’t think they hit the hammer on the head for the price range IMHO. (9 pounds for a burger) But presentation and size helped.
However, that being said, the football special (10 pounds for a burger, chips, and a pint) was an EXCELLENT deal.
I think the fries were better than the chips. which was unexpected.
This place get’s lots of bonus points for atmosphere, friendly staff, quick service, and fair drink prices. I’d go back for sure.

The Thirsty Bear is aces! Their customer service is impeccable! Their burgers are good and the presentation is lovely (on a thick wood cutting board). Ask for a bit of mayo and you get a huge helping. Order a beer from your table’s iPad and it’s there before you’re even done feeling superior about the fact that you just ordered a beer on an iPad.
The novelty of having a tap at your table is only slightly lessened by the fact that the options (a cider and a lager) aren’t as desirable as the real ales at the bar. If you’re there to watch a game you have a large screen and several flat panels to choose from. You can’t miss the action.
The location is super convenient, right off the southbank near OXO Tower. The pub itself is super charming with an upstairs area and outside dining. And, if nothing else, the topnotch customer service will have you smiling as you exit. The Bear knows how to make you feel special. It’s nice that they have good food and drink, too.

Beating the other Unilocaler’s I went with to this…
I think as a package deal this place is really cool. Very good burgers, equally delicious (and crispy) chips, and all with a fresh spin on ordering food. For those curious, that includes ordering on an ipad and having a tap at your table. It’s a great idea, and really helps this place stand out in the memory. I believe they have a deal on as well where you get a good burger, chips, and a pint for a tenner on ‘Premier League nights’: great deal.