The Rake
They opened at 6pm on Friday 4 August 2006 with three casks and six keg lines, after being told beer drinking was declining and they would be bankrupt by Christmas.
Why go
Richard Dinwoodie and Mike Hill had run Utobeer as a Borough Market stall since 1999 and kept being asked where you could actually drink the beers they sold. They took the lease on 14 Winchester Walk, stripped out a greasy spoon that had been serving tea to market traders since between the wars, kept its Pilkington glass ceiling, and talked the market trust into letting them turn two parking spaces into a beer garden (Borough Market). London had fewer than ten breweries at the time. The bar has sold a constantly rotating range
ever since, and the market's own listing sets the floor at at least five draught beers, three real ales and a fridge choc-full of bottles at any one time
(Borough Market). The buying leans American, which in 2006 was the whole argument.
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever is on cask that week, then something off the keg wall you do not recognize. The range is the product.
- Avoid: Friday evening if you want to sit, and any assumption that this is cheap. The founders say they have
drawn criticism over pricing.
1
What locals & experts say
- Richard Dinwoodie and Mike Hill, in Borough Market's own pages at the bar's 18th birthday (August 2024), on the reception in 2006:
We were told that this would never work, that beer drinking was declining, that we were mad and would be bankrupt by Christmas.
And on the scene since:When The Rake first opened, the number of breweries in London was not even 10; today, it's nearly 100!
1 - Matt Brown, Londonist (November 2013), on the scale of the place:
It's rare to find a drinking establishment whose indoor floorspace is more diminutive than that of its men's toilets (which it borrows from the adjacent market), but The Rake is definitely one of those pubs.
His practical advice still holds: Friday evenings compress, buton a Saturday morning it can be a quiet, relaxed sanctuary from the market's masses.
3 - Industry votes: none. All 589 rows in our London chef-vote corpus were checked and nobody names The Rake.
Good to know
- Where: 14A Winchester Walk, SE1 9AG, on the back edge of Borough Market. It is a Borough Market trader, so the market entry and this one describe the same afternoon.
- Timing: Monday to Friday noon to 11pm, Saturday 11am to 11pm, Sunday noon to 10pm. Saturday morning is the quiet window.
- Booking: walk in. The indoor room is very small and the beer garden is where the space is.
- The building: a Victorian drinking den from the 1860s, then a market traders' cafe, then this since 2006.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Southwark, but the inspection is dated 23 April 2018. Clean, and eight years old.4
Verdict
should-visit — This is worth the detour if you care about beer, and worth twenty minutes even if you are only passing through the market. Richard Dinwoodie and Mike Hill had been running Utobeer as a Borough stall since 1999 and opened this at 6pm on Friday 4 August 2006 with three casks and six keg lines, at a point when London had fewer than ten breweries and 'craft beer' was not yet a phrase anyone used. Their own account of the reaction is the best line about the place: 'We were told that this would never work, that beer drinking was declining, that we were mad and would be bankrupt by Christmas.' Nearly a hundred London breweries later, the buying is still the craft: they describe a 'constantly rotating range' and the market lists a floor of five draughts, three real ales and a fridge of bottles at any time. The room is genuinely tiny, smaller inside than the toilets it borrows from the market, so come on a Saturday morning rather than a Friday night, and go in knowing the founders themselves acknowledge they have drawn criticism over pricing.