Location: Maltby Street
Opening hours: Saturday 1000-1700
Other days: Sunday 1100-1600, Friday 1200-1430
Official site: http://www.maltby.st/
Last updated: 04/07/2021
There are people out there who describe the Bermondsey Beer Mile as a route that starts at the Fourpure brewery and ends at Anspach & Hobday. These people are WRONG. That might have been the case back in 2014, when there were only five or six places on the route that sold booze. There are now well over a dozen, a figure I'm keeping deliberately vague because it keeps changing all the time. If you attempt to drink a pint at all of them over the course of a single Saturday afternoon, you could possibly die.
Here's the biggest advantage of starting at the other end of the Mile: most of the bars aren't open till at least 11am, so you may as well kick off with a decent breakfast. Maltby Street Market has multiple food options available along its length. Back in the day, The Cheese Truck was our personal favourite, selling enormous grilled cheese sandwiches that were absolutely perfect as pre-beer dining. By its nature, though, a market can be a rather fluid thing, and its stalls will move around and change from time to time. On the evidence of our June 2021 visit, The Cheese Truck now appears to have moved on, with their latest project being a Cheese Barge moored on the Regent's Canal.
Since we first launched this site, Maltby Street Market has expanded past the north end of the Ropewalk and up to the top of the street. If you want to find out what's on offer at Maltby Street now, their website appears to be reasonably up to date. There's a split between the traders - the people who run the stalls which could change from week to week, and the concessions - the more permanent establishments located inside the railway arches. Of the traders who are there at the time of writing, we've enjoyed the work of Gyoza Guys: of the concessions, we have a soft spot for Taylor's Of Maltby Street as a decent greengrocer's more geared towards stuff you can take home and cook yourself. You can even start your drinking for the day inside the market, thanks to the Malt Craft Beer concession. But maybe get something to line the stomach first, eh?
Pandemic update: our usual recommended strategy of grabbing food from a Maltby Street stall and walking around with it currently isn't an option. The market is operating a sort of one-way system - put it this way, on our last visit it was being policed at one end but not the other - and you can only eat there if you're sat at one of the tables provided by the food vendors. You can still get food to go and eat it at Hiver, though.
Now walk 170m to Southwark Brewing --->
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