Restaurant Review: The Bear

Definitely Not A Spin-Off Of The TV Series

A very long time ago I lived in Camberwell and used to be a music critic. Every Saturday morning I would go to the sorting office on Station Road to pick up records that had not fitted through my letterbox. I’d come away with a sack full of vinyl, making each week feel like Christmas. On the way home I’d scurry past a rough pub Called Jack Beard’s on the corner opposite the bus depot, full of old men sipping their first pint of the day.

Times have changed as have names. I was the only old man there when I recently visited Jack Beard’s, which was rebooted as The Bear a few years back. And there is nothing rough about it. For the last few years it has been building up a reputation as one of SE5’s top eateries. Really classy food in a cool setting. The only thing that’s the same is that the bus depot is still opposite.

I first noticed The Bear a couple of years ago when I went to a book-reading event at a record store nearby. Dash The Henge has great albums and puts on bands and mini-festivals. They’ve linked up with The Bear in the past, which also has a turntable and racks of vinyl in the corner. You could call the style Peak Hipster if you wanted to be harsh. But I’m not and I loved it.

This is a pub that has everything. A nice open bar with new-yet-vintage furniture and a dining area around the corner where you can see the kitchen. The benches are a bit hard and the chairs are a bit schoolroom but they look good and that’s the main thing. Everyone in the kitchen seems to be happy, nothing like the TV series The Bear at all.

We actually chose to eat in the bar area next to the big windows looking out onto Camberwell New Road so that we could soak up the bus depot vibes. Apologies for the pictures. Blame it on the subtle lighting in the room which is very forgiving for wrinkly faces but not so good for iPhone XR cameras.

The food is reasonably priced, but, of course, it’s small plates o’clock here, so you need more than a couple of dishes. There were two of us and this is what we ordered. I’m afraid we got a bit carried away:

Brown butter milk bun £4

Stracciatella, Iberiko tomatoes, caper, anchovy £14

Grilled pear, blue cheese, hazelnuts, Jerusalem artichokes £16

Raw beef, Thai dressing, curry leaf, lemongrass £14

Devon crab, peanut, pickled cabbage, yuzu £22

Hispi cabbage, miso butter £5

Trust me, it took tremendous will power to resist the slow cooked pork belly, sesame, cucumber, Korean spice (£24)

Eloquent critic Jimi Famurewa reviewed The Bear for The Standard in 2024 but he didn’t rank the dishes from best downwards so I’ll do that instead. He also suggested that on weekdays the only food you can eat in the pub area was crisps, so maybe we got lucky.

The Devon crab came in a little mound, like something out of Close Encounters. Dig into it and all manner of flavours burst out, predominantly peanut and yuzu, an Asian citrus fruit that gave it a real zing. This was the stand-out dish for me.

I also really liked the grilled pear. My dining partner suggested we should treat it as a dessert but I wasn’t sure I could wait. The pear was sweet and skilfully not overcooked at all, the blue cheese scattered around it, alongside finely chopped hazelnuts. There was an appealing nutty texture to the cubes of artichoke . There’s nothing unusual about pear and blue cheese but this version took it to another level.

Hispi cabbage has become something of a go-to side order in gastropubs for me and it was very much on point here, the cabbage swimming, well, paddling, in a gentle broth of miso butter. The butter milk bun was essentially a brioche which we ordered to mop up the juices from the exquisite stracciatella and Iberiko tomatoes.

There wasn’t a dud on the menu. Maybe the raw beef. I first had this in the Soho Brasserie around thirty years ago just for the novelty value (and the expense account) and being young, quipped to my friend at the time that they’d forgotten to cook my burger. Yes, I was very funny in my youth. I don’t eat much meat these days and tbh it was my friend, who is a chef, who ate most of it and felt the mix of herbs and spices wasn’t quite how she would have prepped it. My nibble tasted fine. Each to their own I guess.

It all looked beautiful – trust me, the pictures really don’t do it justice at all – and the bill came in just shy of £90 for two, including one small beer. There are cheaper places to eat in SE5 of course and there’s a lot of competition for your custom if classy pub food is your bag. The Camberwell Arms is consistently good and The Kerfield Arms has just been included in the latest Michelin guide. But The Bear ticks a lot of boxes for me. As long as they let me eat by the window and wistfully remember those big bags of vinyl I’ll be back.

The Bear, 296A Camberwell New Road, SE5 ORP.