The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington – no. 6 – i’klectik

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Update: i’klectik remains open as an arts and events space with a bar serving drinks and snacks, but they no longer serve meals from the kitchen

Positives: We love visiting Old Paradise Yard – it’s so peaceful and calm, partly because it’s a little hard to find and not many people know about it yet (it’s on the North side of Archbishop’s Park, yards from St Thomas’s Hospital, at 20 Carlisle Lane). i’klectik is the heart of Old Paradise Yard, with a lovely outside seating area. It’s spacious inside and out.

This is their weekend menu typically, sometimes with two choices of quiche, and their salads are delicious with some of the food grown on site:

They have a, yes, eclectic range of events and exhibitions from hard rock record fairs to exhibitions on sexual violence to the launch party of the next Dark Mountain book, for those interested in literature about the possibly imminent breakdown of industrial civilisation. And how many London venues have not one but two pianos?

On the weekends you can visit the new Oasis urban farm, also at Old Paradise Yard, and on weekdays you can pop in to Gabriel Fine Art Gallery next door (not that we’ve ever found it open).

Negatives: Their name still makes us cringe. The menu is not extensive, and it is vegetarian which we approve of but might put some people off. If you’re not interested in sexual violence or the breakdown of industrial civilisation, well, you can always just have a slice of quiche and sit outside.

Hygiene rating: not rated yet

Address: Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, London SE1 7LG

Website here but their Facebook page is more up to date

Come back next Sunday to see what’s at no. 5.

The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington – no. 7 – Vauxhall Street Food Garden

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Positives: Ingenious use of outside space bringing several new street food options to the area. Sometimes they offer free filter coffee. They’re open weekday day times from 11.30am to 9.30pm, but tomorrow is the start of their last week for the year due to inclement weather. See our original review here – but all the stalls have changed since then. Here were the menus on our recent visit:

Zingle Food – North African cuisine

Naughty Roti – Indian inspired burritos

Argentine Steaks & Burgers

Chinese food

Burmese food

Negatives: There’s no escaping the fact that this is the outside area of the Lightbox nightclub and not actually a garden by any stretch of the imagination. There aren’t too many veggie options. In fact there aren’t as many stalls as when the “garden” opened last year, and those that are there haven’t taken as much trouble over their appearance.

Hygiene rating: N/A

Address: 6A South Lambeth Place, London SW8 1SP

Facebook page

Come back next Sunday to see what’s at no. 6.

The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington – no. 8 – Sirena’s

Posted on August 30, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Sirena’s sadly closed down for good.

Positives: Imagine eating creamy ravioli while watching Back To The Future – that’s what it’s like visiting Sirena’s. There’s a dessert trolley and a great atmosphere. It will cheer you up and fill you up.

~~Negatives: You have to be in the right mood to eat your lunch in 1989. In the basement of an office building. With a dessert trolley. And they’re only open on weekdays.~~

~~Hygiene rating: 5 out of 5~~

~~Address: Southbank House, Black Prince Road, SE1 7SJ~~

~~Website (also from 1989)~~

~~Come back next Sunday to see what’s at no. 7.~~

Supper Club Frenzy

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

It’s a supper club bonanza in Kennington this week, with two separate pop-up dinner events taking place mere streets away from each other in North West Kennington.

On Thursday August 27th, The Ragged Canteen are hosting their inaugural dinner event, at an extremely reasonable price of three courses for £15 (tickets here). Expect robust, imaginative vegetarian fare, and some ‘small surprises’. We’re not in on the secret of what the unexpected element of the evening might be – as long as it’s not an appearance from local resident Peter Stringfellow, who we saw being turned away rather incongruously from the Tea House Theatre on Sunday (it was a rainy afternoon and there wasn’t space for his Bugaboo alongside all the others). If you book, you’ll be sure of a table at The Ragged Canteen.

Beaconsfield, home of The Ragged Canteen

On August 28th and 29th, Roots and Shoots are bringing back their Magpie Kitchen, with a menu that’s an interesting cocktail of Middle Eastern, Indian and Mediterranean influences. The Roots and Shoots garden should be looking particularly verdant after Kennington’s recent deluges, too.

Roots and Shoots

Brunswick House have also been hosting their own supper clubs in recent months, but they are rather more elite affairs. For restaurant staff, they run the Sinning on Sundays dinners, with entrance strictly restricted to trade only, and at the other end of the spectrum was this summer’s Brunswick House Ball (dress code: Black Tie with a Napoleonic Twist), for those who like their supper clubs with a hefty side order of Georgian grandeur.

Brunswick House restaurant

The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington – no. 9 – Tea House Theatre

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Tea House Theatre - Kenningtonrunoff.com

Positives: They transformed a former pub into a tea house with a lot of personality. A convivial setting, on what is now called Vauxhall Walk Square, on the edge of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. At lunch, they do a good Welsh rarebit, a kedgeree, and just about every type of tea you could think of. Sometimes there’s live music, and it’s an events space at night, for everything from poetry to ballroom dancing to, yes, theatre. It’s Kennington’s most baby-friendly venue – they will roll out the red changing mat for you and your little one.

Tea House Theatre cakes and tea - kenningtonrunoff.com

Negatives: About those babies – if you don’t want to eat lunch surrounded by NCT groups, you’re in the wrong place. Being militant about tea, they don’t serve coffee. There’s a big choice of cakes but they are all intensely creamy and rich.

Update in 2019: Did we mention they hate milennials and love Nigel Farage and Brexit?

Hygiene rating: 4 out of 5

Address: 139 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HL

Website

Come back next Sunday to see what’s at no. 8.

The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington – no. 10 – Imperial War Museum café

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Positives: ~~The food, by Peyton & Byrne, is unusually good for a museum cafeteria.~~ Update in 2019: the food is no longer by Peyton & Byrne and is no longer above average.

You can sit outside in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth park when the weather is fine.

Negatives: Hordes of tourists, especially during school holidays. Often a lengthy queue at lunchtime.

Imperial War Museum cafeteria - kenningtonrunoff.com

Hygiene rating: doesn’t seem to have one yet

Address: Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ

Website

Come back next Sunday to see what’s at no. 9.

The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Following the huge excitement around our Top Ten Best Restaurants in Kennington list, this Sunday will see the start of our Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington. This is for all those establishments that don’t generally open in the evenings, from Sally White to the Imperial War Museum cafe. Suggestions welcome.

Sirena’s

Po’ Boys – New Orleans pop-up restaurant

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

A good rule of thumb for pop-up dining experiences – the longer a pop-up runs, the more likely it is to be a professional outfit. We will never forget a visit to a very short-lived pop-up in Bethnal Green that involved drinking Aldi own-brand lemonade from water cooler cups while waiting for our undercooked stew to arrive. Po’ Boys, a journey through New Orleans cuisine set in a hidden steelyard in West Kennington, is running until September, and it shows. The venue – The Yard on Durham Street – has hosted a handful of food events since it opened last year, and while it’s no Creole townhouse, it felt a long way from the fringes of the West Kennington gyratory on a balmy Friday night.

Po Boys bar - kenningtonrunoff.com

Draped with Mardi Gras beads on entrance through a small speak-easy style door, guests are offered a potent New Orleans Hurricane cocktail in the cobbled hackers yard. Dining is at communal tables – Sathnam Sanghera was sat on ours; perhaps you’ll find Will Self trying another local dining option after his saddening time at Dirty Burger?

Po Boys table - kenningtonrunoff.com

When the food came, it was tasty without exception – Jalapeño Poppers pegged up on a steel washing line (above), sticky sweet Dr Pepper-doused ribs, tiny mason jars filled with pickled crawfish, an authentic-tasting gumbo (below), and a very heady Mississippi Mud Pie (further below). All to a soundtrack that stretched from the Kygo remix of Sexual Healing through to Bayou anthem Proud Mary.

Po Boys Mississippi Mud Pie - kenningtonrunoff.com

Tickets for a few of the dates are already sold out, but there are still plenty left with good availability.

Dates: Friday nights, Saturday nights & Sunday lunches on selected dates to 27th September. Cost: £35 for five courses plus cocktail.

Address: The Yard, 4 Durham Street, SE11 5JA.

Café at Jamyang Buddhist Centre

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

There are three Buddhist Centres in Kennington (see also the Kagyu Samye Dzong Tibetan Buddhist Centre and the Diamond Way Buddhist Centre in the former Beaufoy Institute), but only one of them is worth visiting if you have no interest in Buddhism, yoga or meditation – that’s Jamyang, for its excellent Courtyard Café.

All the food is vegetarian, much of it is vegan, and it’s delicious. They always have a selection of salads and cakes as you can see above. Their quiche is our favourite main but they’d run out last time we visited so we had bulghur wheat served with spinach, caper and artichoke for £4.80, or £6.80 with salads:

Most of their products are organic, and they serve local sourdough bread from the Kennington Bakery.

Jamyang Buddhist Centre - kenningtonrunoff.com

The building is an old courthouse dating from 1869, in its later days used as a maximum security court for special remands, including IRA terrorists, the Kray twins, and members of the gang who seized the Iranian Embassy. Despite that, when the sun is shining, Kennington has nowhere more peaceful to eat your lunch than the Jamyang courtyard:

and certainly nowhere else with a giant gold statue of Buddha surrounded by plants:

Glastonbury Festival are increasingly looking to Kennington for inspiration when booking their acts. When the Foo Fighters pulled out as headliner, they booked Florence & The Machine, clearly remembering the time Florence Welch stepped up to the plate at short notice at South London Pacific. Likewise, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama “played” Glastonbury this year, but he appeared at Jamyang way back in 1999, when he blessed and inaugurated a new shrine.

Jamyang’s cafe is open Monday-Friday 10am-4pm (we wish they’d open on the weekend too). They have free wi-fi and takeaway available. Get there early for the quiche.

Address: Jamyang Buddhist Centre, The Old Courthouse, 43 Renfrew Road, London, SE11 4NA.

Three Stags Pizzeria

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Kennington Runoff

Since our last visit to The Three Stags, they have converted their upstairs room into an open kitchen dining room with wood fired pizza oven:

The pizza was delicious – the best we’ve had in Kennington. They only do one size – twelve inches – and they make their own dough which is proved for two days “resulting in the most delicious light easy to digest base”. We had buffalo mozzarella and tomato which tasted wonderfully fresh although not cheap at £14.50:

There’s table service and the staff were particularly friendly and helpful. They’ve gone to a bit of trouble with the decor as well, with London-themed wallpaper by Timorous Beasties:

As befits a pub so close to the Imperial War Museum, they have war memorabilia around their stairs:

They serve food Monday to Friday 12- 4 and 6 -10, Saturday 12-5 and 6 – 10, Sunday 12-4 and 6-9 and they’re open till midnight except on Sundays (11pm). It’s a good summer pub thanks to all their outside seating, big windows upstairs and the adjacent Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park.

Here’s our original piece about The Three Stags if you’d like to learn more about their environmental credentials, their beekeeping or their Charlie Chaplin links.

Kennington Runoff

Surreptitiously exploring Kennington, including the suburbs Vauxhall, Oval, Walworth, and Elephant since 2012

Category Archives: cafes and restaurants