The Camberwell Arms
The kitchen smokes its own fish and makes its own bread, ice cream, pickles and ferments, and the dish both of Time Out's 2026 gastropub lists stopped on is crispy fried pig's head with piccalilli (Top 50 Gastropubs, Time Out).
Why go
Mike Davies cooked at Le Manoir, St John Bread & Wine, The Ledbury and The Anchor and Hope before he opened this pub in 2014 with Frank Boxer and James Dye, the two he runs Frank's Café in Peckham with. The three of them met working at The Canton Arms in Stockwell (London Now). That is the whole Anchor and Hope line in one room, and it shows in the way the menu is built: short, seasonal, and rewritten often enough that reading the blackboard is part of the meal.
The building went up in 1856 and traded as The Stirling Castle for most of its life. It still has the high ceilings, the solid wood bar and the fireplace, and one of the grand upstairs rooms is now a private dining room with its own bar.
In June 2026 Time Out put the pub ninth in Britain and first in London inside a week. That is the London gastropub field, which is the deepest in the world, and this is currently sitting on top of it.
Order this / avoid
- Order: crispy fried pig's head with piccalilli, which both Time Out lists name. Beer onions on toast with aged gruyere for the table before it. Crispy barbecued mackerel over sweet and sour peppers if the board has it, from a kitchen that smokes its own fish. On a Sunday, the roast: The Guardian put it first in fifty in 2017. Finish with the lemon tart.
- Avoid: arriving set on one dish. The menu is short and moves with the seasons, so the thing you read about last month may be gone. Do not come for the beer either. The wine list is the drink this kitchen was built around.
What locals & experts say
- Ed Cunningham and Kelly Bishop, Time Out, "Mapped: Britain's 21 best gastropubs in 2026" (18 June 2026), ranked 9:
this grand Victorian boozer doesn't need fanfare: it's one of London's greatest gastropubs.
On the cooking:A short menu is seasonal cooking at its finest: the likes of crispy barbecued mackerel on a bed of sweet and sour peppers, pork loin chop with semi-hearted red cabbage, and crispy fried pig's head with piccalilli.
1 - Leonie Cooper, Time Out London Food & Drink Editor, "London's best gastropubs" (24 June 2026), ranked 1:
Sustainably sourced meat comes from a man called Farmer Tom, and you'll have the likes of pork loin chop served with semi-hearted red cabbage to get stuck into alongside beer onions on toast with aged gruyere, or crispy fried pigs head with piccalilli. Truly wonderful stuff.
2 - Andy Oliver, co-chef and owner of Som Saa, in Time Out's chef picks (28 June 2018):
I live near The Camberwell Arms, which I love. They have a solid beer selection and a regularly changing menu of delicious food. They do banging pies to share, have a strong Sunday roast game and make a mean lemon tart. It's a perfect day-off-after-a-hard-week type of spot.
Eight years old and the only industry vote on file.10 - Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners, at the relaunch:
This pub revamp sees it being taken over by the same people behind Waterloo's hugely popular Anchor and Hope and has Mike Davies in the kitchen, a young chef trained up in the Anchor family.
6 - Mike Davies on the kitchen, to London Now (26 June 2026):
Everyone at The Camberwell Arms works hard to keep our offering evolving.
3 - A correction worth carrying. Search results and one local-title line both say this pub is ninth on the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs list. The 2026 A-Z list was read in full and it is not on it. The nine belongs to Time Out.5
Good to know
- Where: 65 Camberwell Church Street SE5 8TR. Denmark Hill overground, or the buses down Camberwell Church Street.
- Hours: the venue publishes none in text on its own site, and both of our fetch lanes return a navigation shell. Phone 020 7358 4364 before you plan around it.
- Booking: the site runs a reservations route and takes private-dining enquiries. Sunday lunch is the sitting to book.
- Upstairs: a private dining room with its own bar, for a group that wants the room to itself.
- Drink: a natural-leaning wine list, cocktails the Top 50 profile calls "simple, well-made", and beer that one chef rated in 2018.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 4, Southwark, inspected 21 January 2026, FHRSID 708645. Components read hygiene 10, structural 5, confidence in management 5, where lower is better.7
- Sites: one. A register search returns a single premises, filed under the building's older name, The Castle.
- Dietary: unknown. The menus are published as images and no dietary statement is readable anywhere on the site.
Verdict
should-visit — Rearrange the afternoon for it, and go on a Sunday if you can get in. Time Out ranked this first among London gastropubs in June 2026 and ninth in Britain a week earlier, which is a serious placing in the city that invented the format. Mike Davies cooked at Le Manoir, St John Bread & Wine, The Ledbury and The Anchor and Hope before opening this room in 2014 with Frank Boxer and James Dye, and the kitchen makes its own bread, ice cream, pickles, ferments and smoked fish. The menu is short and gets rewritten with the seasons, which is the craft axis here and is stated by four separate sources including Davies himself. Andy Oliver of Som Saa eats here on his day off and rates the pies, the roast and the lemon tart. It holds at should-visit rather than higher because London's gastropub field is deep and nothing on this menu is unavailable elsewhere in the city, which is what the top rung asks for.