Co-incidence time again – I went to the Rake by Borough Market last night with Patto, who was over from Amsterdam, without knowing that it had just won the best bar award in Time Out‘s Eating and Drinking Awards.
It’s not the smallest pub I’ve ever been in but it’s certainly smaller than my living room, and if they ever got the 40 people I’ve seen claimed as the maximum capacity in there, then nobody would have much room for elbow-raising. Three people at the tiny bar and no one else can get served. I could understand how the manageress, as she showed us the award, now on a shelf behind the bar, was clearly in several minds about the accolade: it’s great to pick up a prize as the best in the capital, but not if you’re too small to cope with the army of new customers likely to be attracted.
Still, it’s good to see a bar recognised for having such a great beer range. The Rake is one of the few pubs that can offer a wider bottled beer selection than your local supermarket, and perhaps its victory will encourage other places to emulate it, and bars like The Lowlander in Covent Garden, and get in a more interesting beer selection. (Though admittedly the Rake has a big advantage in being owned by the people who run the excellent Utobeer stall around the corner in Borough market itself. My only complaint about Utobeer is that I can never carry away as many bottles as I want to, since I go there by train …) And if it does get overcrowded now it’s won an award, there are several other good pubs nearby …
Beer trivia alert – the Rake’s telephone number (and I bet the Utobeer guys don’t know this) reflects the beery history of Southwark, the borough in which it is situated. Back when I were a lad, London telephone exchanges all had names, like FLEet Street and WHItehall, and you dialled the first three letters of the name, plus the four-digit number of the individual subscriber. Southwark’s exchange was named HOP, to mark the fact that it was the centre for the hop-factoring industry: the hops would be brought up to Southwark from Kent, and sold at the Hop Exchange. When the telephone exchange names were changed to numbers, they were simply altered to the numerical equivalent of the letters on the telephone dial, so FLEet Street became 353, for example, and HOP became 407. Later all the central London exchanges has an extra 7 added to the front of their number, so 407 turned into 7407. The Rake’s phone number is 7407 0557 – or 7HOP 0557, if you like …
OK, with that telephone exchange fact, I declare you the winner. It’s almost frightening that you know that. How on Earth did you find that out?
That’s just one of the pieces of trivia cluttering up the attic in my mind that I’ve known for years – since I knew lots of Southwark phone numbers still reflected the old HOP exchange, I guessed the Rake might have one, and yup, it did – so does the Anchor, nearby. It’s remarkable how many of the old “name” exchanges survive hidden in the current numbers, like SKYport for the Heathrow area, and TATe for around Victoria, though many have been changed, as this site shows …