You've been to a couple riverside pubs in the area only to find them all teeming with yuppie-types, monopolising every last bit of glorious patio space on what is perhaps the last sunny day of a summer that's done its best to cling on desperately to sunshine and mild temperatures. You just want to enjoy it, I know.
I know.
So when you can't even get a space INSIDE one of the aforementioned riverside pubs, and you didn't really want to eat oysters on your Sunday pub outing anyway - you rich a-holes - you head a little farther south. A little farther into the Isle of Dogs. Farther into the unknown.
But then you can happen upon the Pepper Saint Ontiod, and it will be a happy day that you do. So the building appears to have been brought to life in Thatcherite Britain, like many of the buildings on the dreary Isle of Dogs, but its austere and utilitarian architecture belies the Pepper Saint's idiosyncratic personality. The mismatched furnishings and accessories from various decades and eras creates a pub pastiche that endears rather than cloys. And on sunny days, you'll find an armchair or two outside on the concourse overlooking the dock - along with some dedicated outdoor furniture of course.
The food here is consistently inexpensive and invariably satisfying. Gastropub fare, this is not. But stop by for a light pub lunch or a proper Sunday roast, and you're sure to leave satiated.
Add to this a better-than-average variety of drinks on tap along with a wine menu and high-quality spirits alongside neighbourly good service behind the bar, and you can't ask for much more in a pub.
Oh, but /THERE'S MORE/ you also get a pool table and table football upstairs (along with more comfortable furniture sprawling the impressive floor space) and a totally hip soundtrack rocking the indie disco with tracks from the Jackson 5 to Portishead to Two Door Cinema Club. I'd say this pub belongs in a place like fashionable East London rather than the Docklands, but then - if it were - I'd never want to go. You see, I'd probably never get a chance to sit on one of the Chesterfields, filled as they'd surely be with moustachioed 20-somethings wearing low-cut vests, leering at me smugly from their ever-present positions on them.
So here's to you, Pepper Saint. And stay just the way you are - malapropos in Millwall. read more