Theos, Redux

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We are conscious of the fact that we bang on about Theos pizza in Elephant to the extent that it appears we’re getting a kickback. But fear not dear diner, we are totally independent and just want to share what we think is the best pizza in our storied land. 

Theo’s is a stripped back, casual restaurant with tables and banquettes complimented by friendly staff. We took new intern Ivan, and he had the item lurking at the bottom of the menu: calzone classico. Trying to act as if he knew what he was talking about, Ivan quipped that the typical UK pizzeria calzone is a domed affair with fillings within tomato sauce on top, and this was entirely flat. Its arrival was met with Ivan’s feigned surprise and perhaps a little suspicion but that was quickly dispelled upon tasting it. What appeared as a flat semi-circle of a pizza (tomato sauce and mozzarella on top) held within its two thin pizza dough layers a layer of the most delicious ricotta and salami. Ivan was won over and said, with a mouthful of cheese, ‘well this is just GREAT’. This will go on your appraisal, Ivan. 

Your scribe consumed an anchovy pizza with capers, olives, oregano, garlic and mozzarella. Luckily your scribe was not planning on snogging anyone in the office later in the day as a great whiff of garlic dominated. This led to a double umami hit provided by the anchovies and capers. The toppings were equitably spaced and generous. As with all of the Theo’s pizzas, the quality of ingredients shined through. Another novelty is the signature blistered base, darkened almost to the extent that you might just be eating ash.

On the drinks front, Theo’s has a good selection of Italian wines and beers at good prices.  Ivan was a bit disappointed  that the carafe of wine ordered was solely for the consumption of your scribe. But if you’re reading this Ivan (and if not you really should be) at the end of a day you’re just an intern so make yourself happy with that Pepsi Max and a flat pizza. Theos is also open at lunch and offer a rocking wood fired sandwich called panuozzo which we reviewed here, and has so many calories you won’t need to eat for the next week. 

The art of seeing: 140 years of Photography at the Camera Club 

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In Bowden Street near Kennington Cross there exists a little known but fascinating gallery space called the Camera Club, and at 140 years old it’s  one of the oldest such clubs in the world.  Upstairs there are studios, darkrooms (not the kind found in a gentleman’s nightclub in Vauxhall), and a digital suite that even mere photo mortals such as you and I can hire. On the ground floor there is a dedicated gallery space that is open for all of us to peruse. And at the moment they have a little showcase of greatest hits.

The art of seeing: 140 years of Photography at the Camera Club is a retrospective of some of the highlights of the vast collection held by the Club. It spans the era from monochrome to the latest digital advancement and showcases what we love the most about photography. Namely, the pursuit of lighting, storytelling, composition, and the way in which photography exposes the spirit of the individual. In its essence this pint sized production reveals how little has changed in subject matter in spite of massive improvements in technology. We just find different avenues to express ourselves. 

The Art of Seeing: 140 Years of the Camera Club is on now until 2 May and is totally free. It’s open daily from 10:00 to 22:00 and weekends from 10:00 to 18:00. And no, we have no idea why it’s open over 75 hours a week. Regarding joining the club, they welcome absolute beginners and information can be found on their website. They also have a series of events and regular casual meetings for photographers to discuss all things snappy. 

Walworth Garden – The Opposite of a Garden Centre 

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If you’re lucky enough to have a garden or a windowsill, then we want to tell you all about Walworth Garden, our own organic community garden shop. If what you demand in a garden shop are gnomes, water features and fragrances then you’re out of luck here, as it’s all about the dirt and the plants and it possesses a refreshingly hippy quality.

The motto at Walworth is ‘if it isn’t in the ground then its for sale’. This hopefully doesn’t extend to the staff, as they are able to offer expert advice and possess forensic knowledge of what they’re selling. The garden sells everything from euphorbia to ferns, perennials to house plants. They also stock statement plants such Tasmanian tree ferns. And every if you don’t buy anything, check out the cacti and succulents in a giant geodesic dome. Pots and soil are also sold. It’s also a very relaxing place to just wander and sit on the many benches to escape our rather chaotic enclave.

Walworth Garden also have an extensive training programme in addition to offering a Level 2 in horticulture. Interesting courses include making perfume and fermentation, but at £85 a pop this training is far from cheap.  But on the other hand, imagine the pleasure at Christmastime when you say ‘look aunty Claire, I made you a bar of soap with some thyme stuck in it’! Or by taking the moral high road with your flatmates when they complain that your bedroom smells like a decomposing rat, by saying  ‘excuse me, but I’m HOME COMPOSTING’! 

The Craggs, the Kennington Family of Acrobats Who Went Global 

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In an age before Netflix and Hulu +, Victorian folk of all classes were entertained at music hall entertainment venues. An almost constant presence in the Halls in their early years was the Cragg family who were multigenerational acrobats specialising in trapeze acts, acrobatics, and it looks like basically just throwing each other around. For 45 years the Cragg family lived at 68 Kennington Road (now the China Walk estate) and even installed a private gym to practice their trade.  

JW ‘Papa’ Cragg was the scion of the family and was soon joined by his five sons and their probably long suffering wives. It was an expectation that the offspring join the family trade, and eventually the grandchildren were taking part.  In the early 1870’s the Craggs upped their game and took residencies in Leicester Square and at the Folies Bergeres in Paris. As there were a number of competing acrobatic acts in London at the time, the Craggs distinguished themselves by donning evening wear, as you do.  

After rave reviews In the 1870’s the Craggs went global, and embarked on a kind of Victorian Taylor Swift Eras tour of the world. The troupe made four trips to Australia, the first in 1873, and also toured Europe, New Zealand, India, Asia, and had a two year residency in the USA. After a lifetime of working together the Craggs became a very disciplined troupe and commanded huge audiences for their unique and daring way of flipping, balancing, moving and coordination. At the end of the European jaunt they earned the highest salary of any acrobatic act in the world. 

As you can imagine, juggling, rolling on the ground, and throwing people in the air while wearing evening wear can take a toll on even the fittest person, and Papa Cragg retired from performing in 1916 when he was 70 and his oldest son was 53. The family act then ceased performing but Papa continued to teach circus skills and acrobatics in his Kennington home gym until the 1920’s. In an interview in 1928 he was described as ‘the youngest old man in the world’. Proof, if ever needed, that Greater Kennington has always embraced its share of oddballs, and that’s why we live here. 

Collective Cakes

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The lovely building in the middle of Kennington Park is occupied by a family run pizza/cake establishment called ‘Collective’. Several years ago they decided to open a sandwich shop called ‘Sugar Pot’ in that frankly quite depressing parade of shops in front of Kennington Park It has now been replaced by a bakery and sandwich place called, fittingly, Collective Cakes.  

Reassuringly, the space at Collective has turned entirely into a kitchen, with goods available to consume either on a takeaway basis or on small tables out front. Our peppy server explained that the pastry chef arrives and cooks all of the baked goods (excluding croissants) from 5am. We saw your typical complement of Victoria sponge, muffins, scones, carrot cake, coffee and walnut, and lime and ginger. There are also vegan and gluten free options. 

Karen from Finance loves nothing more than a midday sweet treat to take her mind off numbers and wondering what happened to the fax machine. She had an apricot croissant, which she described as ‘of good quality and not as bouncy as those chain coffee shops’, adding that it possessed good flakiness and was a nice dark bronze, with apricot notes. Your scribe opted for one of the many savoury options and had a mozzarella, pesto and tomato sandwich. Good quality mozzarella, rich pesto, served on a kind of sourdough bread. Other sandwiches ingredients included prosciutto, stilton, and brie. They also sell homemade sourdough bread (I mean, who doesn’t).

In addition to the goodies outlined above, Collective also serves latte, cappuccino, and that old fashioned thing called coffee. Our server was keen to point out that that they also serve turmeric latte with no caffeine. We have no idea what that is but once we find that fax machine we’ll get to it.  

Raging Planet and The Power at Newport Street Gallery

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We just attended the premiere of two exciting new shows at Newport Street Gallery. And by ‘premiere’ we mean ‘the first day’ as people like us don’t get invited to actual premieres. Curated by the son of the man who owns the Gallery, Connor Hirst, in a strange manner the exhibits contrast and relate to one another. 

In the downstairs we find the exhibit ‘Raging Planet’, which is a group show of six different global artists who are endeavouring to incorporate the chaos which is inherent in our planet into their work, mostly by using elements found in the earth. So what we find are swirling, abstract paintings on aluminium. Other paintings feature pigments mixed with sawdust, and in one arresting piece large clumps of mud are painted over in a Franz Klein blue.

For us the best room is the last, where artist Richard Hiornes encrusts sculpture and paintings with copper sulphite crystals. What we see is a giant engine made inert by a residency of crystals and duelling cathedrals in the midst of a crystal invasion. So if what you demand in a show is rocks on the floor and even a small DJ booth, then this could be right up your avenue. You can dance and then fall over on a rock, recreating the experience of many Observer staff at Glastonbury.

More unsettling is the exhibit upstairs, ‘The Power and the Glory’, which is about nuclear weapons testing. We thought it was a strange contrast to the previous exhibit celebrating the earth as opposed to destroying it. The exhibit features a great deal of photos about nuclear weapons tests post WW2 in the Pacific . They are aesthetically pleasing if you can divorce this from their intended purpose, which we struggled to achieve. Mixed in with these are images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after they were destroyed. 

In the middle of the exhibit we have a beautiful exhibit of what are called ‘scholars rocks’. For centuries they have been collected in East Asia and appreciated by their abstract and wave like forms. As they are also associated with downfall,  one definition of a scholar rock is as a ‘weapon that shatters a dream’. Perhaps this therefore serves as poignant complement to the photos that surround them. 

Raging Planet and The Power and the Glory are on now until 31 August and, like love itself, is totally free. 

Unique in Black Prince Road.

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We’re blessed with an abundance of independent coffee shops in Greater Kennington, and we  recently paid a TKO (that’s The Kennington Observer) visit to new kid on the block ‘Unique’ in Black Prince Road. Located close to the Beaconsfield Galley, it inhabits that patch of land that calls itself Vauxhall but really isn’t.

Unique is a pleasing place to work for a few hours for those of you (not us as we’re in and underground bunker in Kennington Cross) fortunate enough to work from home a few days a week. In addition to teas and juices, they also have the traditional compliment of flat whites, Americanos, lattes, mochas and cappuchinos. And they even sell the coffee range ‘Curious Roo’. It is a quiet place to work and to listen to ambient music while chilling with middle class white people. They also serve croissants, cookies and brownies and have some bonkers art the walls.

And while we never objectify people at TKO based on looks alone, the staff are not bad to look at. 

Millicent Fawcett and Vauxhall Park

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The research division here at Observer have been working overtime to establish and claim feminist writer, politician, trailblazer and suffragette Millicent Fawcett as one of our own, and we think they’ve cracked it. Her many achievements are outlined here and if you’re the attentive sort you’ll be aware that she was the first female honoured with a statue in Parliament square a few years ago.

For a number of years Millicent and her equally esteemed husband Henry Fawcett lived in a house in what is now Vauxhall Park. The house included grounds and the couple realised that in an increasingly cramped Vauxhall this was a privilege which they wanted to share with others. Although the genesis of the idea came from Henry, when he died prematurely in 1884 it came down to Millicent and several other people to fashion the reality. 

The Fawcett’s home and gardens extended from South Lambeth Road back quite a bit. Although spacious, the gardens weren’t quite large enough to create a promenading style park, so Millicent and another pioneering champion of the underdog, Octavia Hill, set about purchasing buildings to create a solid, square park. The park was opened by Prince Charles in 1890. And before you throw your laptops out the window, as he was the Duchy of Cornwall the ground beneath the park was (and is) technically his. 

Vauxhall Park doesn’t look so inviting in March, but you get the point

So, you may be asking yourselves ‘now why isn’t there a memorial to the Fawcetts in Vauxhall Park’? Well this is a great local mystery. There was a very fine stature created by the Vauxhall based Doulton factory of Henry (but not our heroine, go figure) and it lived in the park for 70 years. In a moment of characteristic insanity, Lambeth Council took a sledgehammer to the statue in 1960.  Henry Fawcett’s legacy now lives on in the form of Henry Fawcett Primary School in Bowling Green Street in Oval. Apparently the bust of Henry in the school is all that remains of the vanquished statue, but this has never been proven.  And when you compare a regal bronze statue in Parliament Square to a chipped bust in a primary school corridor, I think we know who ended up with the better deal.

Fawcett’s legacy lives in the form of the Fawcett Society, which is in Black Prince Road. Their mission is to fight sexism and gender inequality through research and campaigns.  

Can You Help With Our Project?

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Some of you might think that the current Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens is the open space that was created when the original Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was closed in 1859, but you’re mistaken. It was actually a vibrant, working class neighbourhood for over 100 years consisting of Glyn Street, Auckland Street and Italian Walk. It was destroyed developed by Lambeth into its current incarnation only in the mid 1970’s.  And believe it or not, the Vauxhall Tavern used to have shops and homes attached to it. The photo with the woman in it was taking in the early 1970’s in Goding Street in the sad dying days.

As we’re sure you are aware, we here at the Runoff are nothing if not highly academic. If you lived in this community or have any information about it we’d love to hear from you and feel free to email us at kenningtonrunoff@gmail.com . So you can be a staff member, or just act like one. Our online research has not exactly been, lets say ‘fruitful’, but we plan to go to Minet history reference library when we can muster the courage to leave Greater Kennington. 

Here is a lovely photo of a family who resided in Auckland Street in 1905. If you’re reading this from your heavenly perch then we welcome your feedback. We’ll get out our ouija board. 

Top Ten Best Places to Eat in Greater Kennington

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+ One Sunday Roast

Best Roast – 24 The Oval

As 24 The Oval has maintained the Observer crown for Best Sunday Roast in our highly-scientific-yet-wholly-subjective top 10 Best Places to Eat Locally list for four years, in Summer 2024 we found it incumbent to pop over to see if they’re still deserving of this noble accolade.

As the office staff visited on a nice August Sunday,  we chose to dine on the outside terrace. Off the bat Phil from Accounts insisted on a round of Bloody Annas, which was really just a Bloody Mary spelled differently. It was high on the lemon and spice: Delicious as such but they will adjust to your taste. To get us ready for the main event of the roasts, we shared some Belted Galloway beef croquettes, which were a hit with all: Spanish-style with their crisp outer casing and unctuous middle. When the Bloody Annas started kicking in Karen from Finance even stuck two croquettes in her mouth and said, garbling, ‘well these are just ace’. Moving on.

Mini Yorkes
Extra Veg
Croquettes

Next up was the first delightful idiosyncrasy of 24 The Oval: the sharing plate of mini Yorkshire puddings with pot of gravy, just to get you going. When the roasts arrived, your scribe indulged in the roast herb fed chicken breast with bread sauce. The chicken was grilled in a kind of upmarket Nando’s style and came with a roastie and salad. The second idiosyncrasy of 24 is that extra vegetables and gravy are provided French family style to share, including a cauliflower cheese made with pungent Ogleshield.

Karen opted for the lamb roast and was served as slices of leg meat plus a small confit of shoulder. Both very tasty even if we did think at first the confit was a brownie, and were presented with a homemade mint sauce. This dish was also already supplied with most of the vegetables: roast potatoes, roast mixed colour carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, a smear of spinach puree and some gravy. 

It wasn’t a brownie

Overall, this is Sunday roast prepared with care and dedication by proper chefs: Top quality ingredients, attention to detail and the delight of abundant proper, homemade Yorkshire puddings and gravy with no sight of Aunt Bessie. We found particularly exciting (we don’t have much of a life here at the Runoff) that the 24 Oval kitchen exists entirely within the restaurant. So if you’re curious about how your Yorkies are being made, or if you just like getting burned, you can inspect how your food is being made. But maybe not after three Bloody Annas. 

Roasts are between £22-£26. Food of this quality doesn’t come cheap, but is excellent.  But will it top our list in 2026 for a fourth crown? There is a lot of competition out there, after all. 

By the way 24, if you’re reading this then you might want to ‘Glow Up’ the front of your shop as it looks rather like that branch of WH Smith in Elephant & Castle shopping centre before it closed