fun pub. good music, nice food, hot barmaids, cool crowd. crap, expensive hieneken, though they do do a mean jack and coke!
i think a few of the negative reviewers are missing the point. this aint no gastro pub or swanky cocktail bar. its were people come to get pissed, make merry and get messy.
toilets are an abomination though

went to see fake blood at the lock tavern last Saturday and it was bloody amazing.
that tiny upstairs room was going off with people dancing all over the tables and even though he played an 'alternative set' it was still top notch. cant comment on food and the like but the drinks for the expensive side of reasonable and the bar staff were nice too look at and having as good a time as us. if something similarly quality is booked i wont hesitate to return!
mens loo upstairs is a joke though...

nice boozer this. went there for the festival-affliated, 'Sundays best' a few weeks ago and had a pretty awesome time. i saw a load of amazing bands and DJ for free, got a decent roast and a glass of wine for not much more than a tenner and had a number of heated smokes in the garden. that said the place was so-mad-you-cant-move busy, the toilets smelly and pokey (if your a bloke) and the staff sometimes a little harassed looking. nonetheless it was the best Sunday ive had in months and when im back in town ill be returning.

A north london institution of disapointment.

This place was meant to be nice, but the staff don't pay any attention, they seem to be completely occupied with themselves and the food is horrible.
A few examples from our evening:

The Meze plate was our starter which we shared between 2 of us, it was the second best thing we had in there that night, some tooth picks aren't too much to ask for if olives are included however...

As for mains:

When the chef rang the bell to get the staff's attention, it took nearly two minutes before anything was done about it, the food sat there and literally chilled out, just like the staff, and the bartender who finally forced himself to get the the food had a quick mouthful of his own soup behind the bar before wiping his mouth with his arm and bringing our lukewarm food to us, nice.

We had a tagliatelle with creamy mushroom sauce and a Lamb burger with a beetroot coleslaw dressing. The pasta was totally bland and utterly flavourless, it even looked it, as for the burger, the patty was too salty and the chips were cold and clearly re-fried, I could only finish a fifth of the burger as the saltiness got too much, it was seriously over seasoned.

The only good thing was the house red, a chilean merlot, the music wasn't too bad either, but everything else let's this place down because it has so much potential. There seems to be no control over staff, nobody stands out as a Manager and nobody gives a shit whether you're happy with what you're paying for.

This place is better off as a boozer, one you go to with a bunch of friends who don't mind awful bartsaff.

Absolutely shocking behaviour from the staff - particularly from one with short blue hair! The toilets were foul with exposed cisterns. The whole place is filthy and looks as though it is being held together with duct tape. The food was really nice but looking around at the cleanliness of the whole place and how miserable some of the staff were....it begs the question how clean is the kitchen?! A lot of the customers were dirty and rude.....bearing all this in mind and the fact that there are numerous places to drink and eat in Camden I would give this one a miss! Unless dirty, smelly and rude is your thing; in which case you will fit right in!

This place is awful. Outside is nice before 10.30pm but after that the venue is cramped and unpleasent. Bar staff are on some sort of power trip and look at you with contempt. Toilets are disgusting, flooded and blocked toilets with no toilet roll. I pointed this out to a member of staff who reponded by saying 'ok'.

Mmmm ... I'm one of those who tend to drift towards places that have bad reviews just in case they've been written by locals who want them to stay relatively quiet and unspoilt !

However, in this instance make sure you read the other reviews first and simply STAY AWAY from this awful venue.

Rude staff who seem to have the broom handle market cornered, so many of them are there firmly stuck up 'where the sun don't shine' its untrue.

They also seem to think that its them who are doing YOU the favour of being in their presence.Overpriced and over-shadowed by other venues within a few minutes walk.

I have to say am a little shocked by the other reviews.

Sure the toilets are rough around the edges and you have to get there early to grab a seat but it is still one of my favourite places in Camden, after the faithfull Steels of course.

The garden is always bustling and although the music can be a little too alternative on some night, they get some wicked names playing there, especially on Sundays.

I have never been stopped on the door but never head up there on a Friday night so maybe there's the difference although agreed the bar staff are a little on the 'cool' side for my liking.

Very pretentious and overrated.

Telling people it is members only on a Friday at 8pm and saying the bar is full is ridiculous, especially when you can see through the window that the pub is far from full.

I watched for a few minutes as they turned so many people away.

the people weren't chavs either. the pub really needs to come down out of the clouds.

Your a pub in Camden, get over yourselves. I don't care that may celebrities drink there :-).

I go the a pub to hear good music and have a good time. Nothing else.

The wort thing about this pub is the staff. The staff is rude and pretentious, they always treat you like they are making you a favor for giving you a badly poured pint of Guinness. After the introduction of the members only evenings, I have not go back there and unless it changes dramatically I don't think I will.

Advertised as free on fridays with live acts. What they dont tell you is that you need to be a member to get in or a rude bouncer will tell you to leave..

I've tried to go there on Friday nights before and everytime Im there the bouncer at the door says its "members only" night.. this has happened on occasions when we've turned up early at 8 or 9pm..
so why do they advertise these events for and promote it as free?? I certainly wont be going back there again..

The Lock is a mix - I've been there a couple of times and both times got a seat in the garden, which is easily the best spot in the place. The Sunday Roast is worth a trip. But it's true that the staff act like you owe them something, and the toilets are amongst the worst I've seen.

The food at the Lock Tavern is great and once you've been a few times you realise that the odd stares from the clientele are curiosity, which is not surprising in a place where celebrities are often spotted.

The Lock Tavern used to be an excellent pub. There was always a really good mix of people, trendies, geeks, chavs, old and young and they all created a good inoffensive atmosphere. In the last year it has turned into somewhere completely different.


The easy going clientelle has been replaced by of over-styled pretentious wannabees. I was beginning to think it had got its groove back until the DJs came on. I’m not sure what sound they were going for but it didn’t hit any marks.



There is however one thing that has remained the same at the Lock Tavern and that is the staff – they have always been awful!

The Lock Tavern is not a good place. It is over crowded and has filthy unisex toilets.

I went to the Lock Tavern last Saturday for my birthday with a group of friends and it was brilliant. If it wasn't for the garden shutting at 11pm, I'd have given it 5 stars. But get to The Lock Tavern early, or you'll never get a seat.

I booked a table at The Lock Tavern last week for my birthday and the staff were brilliant. It was a Friday night and they didn't have to take the booking in the first place as they would have filled it, but they were really helpful. They also put up with us arriving really late and held the table for us on the roof terrace. Consistently friendly staff, nicely prepared food with good, fresh ingredients and a great atmosphere. I live in South London so don't go out in Camden too often, but The Lock Tavern will definitely be my stop-off next time round.

The Camden Lock Tavern has to be the most pretentious bar in Camden with an appalling staff attitude. I rang up recently to book space for 30 people for my practice in celebration of a recent award and found the lady at the other end of the phone incredibly unhelpful and quite frankly rude. After putting down the phone I decided to take by business elsewhere namely the Camden Arms - not that the Lock Tavern was bovvered, in true Catherine Tate style! 30 people in a bar on a Monday afternoon is a lot of money and repeat custom that the Lock Tavern missed out on because of some snotty bar person! Don’t bother going, there are far cooler places to go in Camden where memberships a smiling face!

The Lock Tavern is is a truly trendy bar. The staff are extremely hot, especially the two blonde barmaids. Gentlemen you should come just for a look at them.

Ladies, the guys are pretty fit as well, as my girlfriends tell me. The music at The Lock Tavern is fantastic. You are always ensured a great night.

I love it and will be back very very soon.

What a night. Even as I approached the famously beautifully-staffed Lock Tavern I felt ready to pop. The perfectly tarnished sofas, the perfectly cracked black wood flooring, the altercation of nonsensical wall design...

After a G & T or two at The Lock Tavern I was ready to shove my job in waste-of-space design and apply for a position in bartendering. Love the barkeep, love the drinks, love the blondes behind the bar.

The Lock Tavern is a really good pub, still rammed and still showing little sign of stopping after having provided us with three years of far more than one would expect from a saturday night or sunday in Camden.

A firm favourite of mine, I like the fact The Lock Tavern doesn't pretend to be a bar perfect for sitting in and chatting for hours over a half a pint of bitter but it does exactly what it says it will. Provides good times, good food (recommend the roasts, always nice, massive and an amazing hangover cure), nice booze, amazing music and the best in local events in a trendy and attractive setting surrounded by primarily nice, interesting, trendy and attractive people.

The staff deal with the pace of service pretty well and on the most part are really nice, they could smile a little more, agreed - but I like the fact they look very much the part too!

I've lived within a couple of roads of The Lock Tavern for years and unless you want an over-priced gastro offering, a manky studenty live music venue, a chav pub or to be served by someone in fetish gear with a mohican higher than the Blackpool Tower, the usual loners and moaners that like to attack a place because of its extreme popularity will be pushed to do much better in Camden.

To say that The Lock Tavern is an awful pub wouldn't be fair. There are clearly a lot of people who love the atmosphere, love the chance to mingle with a distinct element of society, love the staff, love the service, love the music and love the food. On certain days of the week I would count myself as someone who finds The Lock Tavern to be a good place to go for a beer and a laugh.

Mondays and Tuesdays leave The Lock Tavern with a reasonable number of normal people and allows it to be somewhere where you can go to enjoy yourself. Other days of the week see a dramatic shift.

The atmosphere is heavily tainted by hugely inflated, yet incredibly fragile egos that the pubgoers cower behind as they fight to maintain the image that they feel you need to live up to when drinking in such a renowned place.

At the weekends, the music is loud enough to give the vacuous clientele a reason for their sporadic and low quality conversation. The quality of staff varies too. A few of the bar staff are friendly and good at what they do, but not all. Whether the attitude of the staff has given the pub its overwhelmingly poncy feel and hence drawn the type of customers that they have or if the type of people that frequent the place has attracted staff that prioritise staring into the mirror to get every over-gelled strand of hair exactly right over serving customers isn't clear.

The pub has clearly hit the jackpot in that it attracts people who like to spend in the way that people do when working hard to hide their unaffordable and oversized credit card bills and for that reason I give the pub owners incredible respect for their business plan, they've clearly cracked the secret recipe to making a big pot of cash.

I live on the road that The Lock Tavern is on and walk past it on most weekends - seeing people that have travelled from far and wide to queue to get into this overhyped pub never fails to bring a smile to my face.

The Lock Tavern is a terrible pub. Through attempts to become desperately cool the pub has unfortunately neglected the importance of a) cleaning the premises thoroughly and b) employing staff that give a tuppence-worth about showing customers any sign of respect.



It's a real shame as the garden and roof terrace at The Lock Tavern are essentially good features. I will never elect to go there myself, but undoubtedly will have to attend the usual birthday drinks that end up being organised in such awful surroundings.

The Lock Tavern is a good pub. What particularly impressed me was the fantastic staff who toil endlessly to supply a steady flow of alcohol to a mix of locals, wacky Americans demanding ridiculous cocktails and filthy Australians demanding pitchers of VB. They're never hungover, always helpful, and the spattering of witty and charming Scandinavian barstaff make every visit to The Lock Tavern a joy.

I love The Lock Tavern it's one of my most favourite pubs in London. Sunday sessions are awesome and the Bloody Mary’s are fantastic. Music is usually some sort of Rock and Roll DJ and there are lots of trendy types in there. Staff are not good however, extremely rude and quite into themselves - don't ever ask for a Cosmopolitan, they'll turn their noses up at you!
But if you can ignore the staff, you'll have a great time with a bunch of friends. Definitely worth booking a table at The Lock Tavern on a Sunday.

The Lock Tavern for me is relaxed and inviting (beer garden which is always hard to find in London). You get the chance to let your hair down after having a few drinks with friends and just continue to chill out.
Pretentious is not a word I would use.

If you like pretence, poseurs and Kensington prices in Camden, you've found your place at the Lock Tavern. Snooty is only the beginning. Always overcrowded (which doesn't mean good) and painfully fake.