As many Greater Kenningtonains spend a few days working from home, we thought we’d up our lunchtime review game by checking out Oval staple Cable Café at the top of Brixton Rd. By all the brick a brac you might think you’d stumbled into dear Aunt Flo’s house clearance after she refused to let anybody in for 40 years, but what you’re getting is a mighty fine and eclectic café surrounded by Flo’s shabby/chic bric a brac.

The daytime trade consists primarily of people popping in for hot drinks and working on their laptops, and the atmosphere is laid back and quiet. We stopped in for lunch, and the specialty is the bang on trend sourdough toasties. Your scribe had it with cheese and tuna, and Phil from accounts had his with cheese and jalapeno. The sourdough was crisp and with sharp and abundant cheese (£8) . Phil had to be reminded that we were at work and chose an Americano as opposed to his usual bottomless red wine.  We also had our eyes on the homemade pastries, sharing boards, and smoothies.

What Cable does ingenuously is to transform itself from a lunchtime sandwich/coffee bar to an evening cocktail and beer joint. The transition happens during the 3-5 happy hour when laptops and chargers give way to candles and, on Wednesday and Saturday, live free jazz. There is a full bar on hand (cocktails £10) in addition to wines both bottled and draft. A good alternative to the at times chaotic pubs of Greater Kennington and Brixton Road outside.

Cable Café is open from 9:00 to 23:00 (midnight at weekends) and is even available to hire out for parties. We need to keep independent places like this going and we’re particulary fond of the food places along this strip such as Conuco and Nosh. More importantly, we need to keep these places going to prevent them from descending into the hellish netherworld that is the ‘bottomless drag brunch’. Because we’ve been there dear reader, and it’s a very dark place.