25-07-2025
The ‘real' drinking pubs serving £5 pints and no fancy food
The Pocket is a tiny pub in north London. Inside, you'll find dark wooden floorboards and panels, an upright piano and a mahogany bar flanked by several stools. It feels as if the pub has been here for years, but it opened in April. There's an impressive range of beers including eight cask lines, but the food offering is minimal: Scotch eggs, sausage rolls, pasties and pickled eggs.
It's a boozer, a proper pub, an old-man's pub if you will. You might have another name for them, but wet-led pubs (which no-one ever calls them, though it's the industry term for places whose primary source of revenue is drink rather than grub) are back. This year, London has seen a plethora of openings, mostly refurbishments of previously shuttered pubs. As well as The Pocket in Islington there's The Hand & Marigold in Bermondsey, the Blue Maid in Borough and the Coach & Horses in Stoke Newington. They follow the launch in 2023 of the diminutive and atmospheric Macintosh Ales, also in Stoke Newington, and The Robin in Crouch Hill.
Beyond the capital you'll find the Horseshoe in Chipping Sodbury, the Duchess of Kent in Erith, Kent, the Goats Head in Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire, The Vine in Peterborough. I could go on. All have reopened since the pandemic without offering an extensive food menu.
It is a tough time for pubs. The British Beer and Pub Association has warned a pub a day will close this year, citing punishing business rates. It estimated that £1 in every £3 taken on beer went to the Treasury. Increasingly, pubs are run by large chains.
For decades publicans have turned to food for profit, and most openings these days are gastropubs. Now a swathe of operators, many free of ties to pubcos, are bucking the trend, opening drinking pubs where the food menu boils down to cheese sandwiches, pork pies and pickled eggs – and the beers are the real draw.
The Pocket's owner, Pete Holt, has owned two much-loved London boozers, The Cock Tavern and the Southampton Arms, for years, as well as the Howling Hops brewery. His pubs are all drinking pubs. 'They're simple, no nonsense,' he tells me. 'We focus on one thing, which is beer and cider from small independent breweries, and try to do that well. I don't like dealing with chefs: I think they interfere with it being a pub.'
Holt reckons the drive for food has been partly driven by the need for tied pubs to buy beer from big breweries at high prices, reducing profit on drinks. He buys beer and cider solely from independent breweries, and The Pocket's beers start at £5.29, a reasonable price for the area. 'People are a bit tired of homogenous chains. Beer-led pubs hark back to a time before gastropubs,' Holt says.
Ali Von Lion documents London's pub scene on the London Pub Explorer Instagram page and runs walking tours of the city's boozers. He has noted a long-term decline in local pubs, with chains now dominating the scene. Post Covid, many pubs removed bar stools, enabling them to serve drinks quicker but reducing conviviality. 'To see wet-led pubs coming back is really good,' Von Lion says, citing the Hand & Marigold, which opened on the site of a pub he once frequented. 'They've done a really good job – it's got character and soul, the beer selection is second to none.'
The Kings Head in Bristol is a historic pub, open since the 1600s. It boasts an attractive back bar dating from the 1860s and, like the Southampton Arms, was recently named one of the best 500 pubs in England by the Telegraph. Since 2022, it has been run by a local independent brewery, Good Chemistry Brewing.
Its co-owner Kelly Sidgwick says the previous iteration 'wasn't really doing itself justice' and closed during lockdown. After taking on the lease, Sidgwick wanted to 'show its beauty and history'. The team painted the ceiling, changed the lighting, pulled up carpets and made 'the beauty of the pub shine'. It now focuses on independent British beers. 'We want it to be somewhere people can feel comfortable just having a drink,' Sidgwick explains. 'Lots of pubs can make you feel like if you're not eating you're not welcome. That's not what pubs are about.'
There's no kitchen at the Kings Head, just cheese and onion sandwiches on the bar and a weekday meal deal offering a pint of cask, a roll and a packet of crisps for £7.50 – excellent value in this day and age. Recently, the team added an extra cask line – a renewed interest in cask beer is partly behind the return of the boozer.
For Von Lion, boozers offer something more authentic and less sanitised than a glitzy gastropub. He has noticed younger generations flocking to old-school pubs like the Army & Navy in London, where the floors are carpeted and the beer prices aren't extortionate.
Simon Cereda, who runs the Simon's Pub Tour Instagram account, agrees: 'There's been a post-Covid fetishisation of old-man pubs, the Guinness wave and all that. I think it speaks to people wanting a place where spontaneous socialising happens, with lower barriers to going out, where bookings aren't required.' He argues that wet-led pubs generally provide a better atmosphere. Punters share tables and converse – although sitting in the corner with a newspaper is just fine.
There are, of course, downsides to not serving much food. Holt says by 8pm ravenous drinkers leave in search of dinner; Sunday lunchtimes can be quiet. But with three beloved boozers, the benefits outweigh the downsides. And he's found a solution: all of his pubs, and those run by Good Chemistry, allow guests to bring their own food. 'Food does bring people in and make them stay longer,' admits Sidgwick. But for now, her boozers are running just fine.
