Tag Archives: Elephant & Castle

last minute Christmas shopping ideas, and the qubes at Marcel & Sons

If you have left your Christmas shopping to the last minute but don’t fancy leaving Kennington for the madness of Oxford Street then fear not, we have suggestions for you.

Sally White are doing Christmas hampers containing six mince pies, a Christmas pudding, a Christmas cake loaf and a robin (not a real one) for £37. They’re open tomorrow and Tuesday daytime.

The Beefeater Gin Distillery’s visitor centre is open every day except Christmas Day and has an extensive gift shop for the patriotic gin lover in your life.

Windmill Flowers have a range of Christmas gifts for plant lovers, plus chocolates and toiletries, and they’re normally open on Christmas Eve although we haven’t checked that.

We buy loads of gifts from the Kennington Bookshop and their Twitter has lots of ideas for presents. If you want to avoid buying from Amazon, they can normally get any book in the next day, but you’ve missed the boat for that this Christmas so you’ll be limited to what they have instore. They also sell wrapping paper.

LASSCO is open until 5pm on December 23rd and they have gift ideas for here for under £300 (if that sounds expensive then bear in mind this is the shop where an antique bath could set you back the best part of £10k).

And in our rave review of Marcel & Sons, we barely mentioned that as well as serving delicious Mauritian street food, they double up as a showroom selling a range of interesting artisanal gifts on behalf of boutique start-ups. They’re open until 9pm tonight, Tuesday and Christmas Eve (they’re closed on Mondays).

These are their “qubes” – they have 48 of them – 40cm cubed shelf spaces available to rent from £10 a week:

They also have six cases for jewellery and other valuables:

Get them to give you some Mauritian biscuits with your purchase. They’re like mini sponge cakes:

Finally, if you’d like to give something to those less fortunate then get along to Waterloo Foodbank, at Lambeth Mission St Mary’s, 3-5 Lambeth Road, SE1 7DQ on Tuesday from 11am to 1pm. They’re looking for donations of in-date, non-perishable foods.

Good luck and have a happy Kennington Christmas.

Marcel & Sons Mauritian tearoom and restaurant

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Marcel & Sons has sadly closed now along with the rest of Artworks, but hopefully they’ll be back soon.

~~Marcel & Sons is one of the freshest, most exciting restaurant/cafe openings in London, but, so far, one of the most low-key.~~

Andy Ng and Randy Tsang used to work in advertising (Andy was a creative director at M&C Saatchi), but they quit the rat race to start a Mauritian tea room, restaurant and showroom in Artworks, the shipping container park at the junction of Walworth Road and Elephant Road in North Kennington. Theirs is the dark green entrance in the bottom left:

Such is their aversion to their former trade of advertising that all they’ve done to publicise Marcel & Sons is start a Facebook and an Instagram account. When we went, we were the only customers in there, but the food and the welcome were so great that perhaps word of mouth will be enough to fill their tiny restaurant.

~~Randy, on the left, is a the fully qualified Cordon Bleu chef, and Andy, on the right, is the front of house:~~

~~If you’re wondering what the cases and shelves on either side are, that’s the showroom element, but we’ll leave that for another day because right now we want to focus on the wonderful food.~~

We’d never had Mauritian food before and we were blown away. You’ll recognise elements from Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian and Korean food, and Marcel & Sons’ take on it has some French Cordon Bleu influence with an emphasis on comfort food (they steer clear of certain Mauritian specialities like sea cucumber and octopus). We could see it catching on in a big way.

There are just three main courses on the menu, but they change every day. We had Bol Renversé which is a sweet yet savoury upside down bowl of rice with homemade Mauritian sausage, sweet wine, onion, garlic, choi sum, fried egg, spring onion and coriander. We liked it so much we even tolerated the shitache mushrooms. The packaging is great too:

~~But the real star dish was Bao Pao – crunchy strips of beef, mazavaroo aioli, pickled cucumber and watercress served in a delicious soft steamed bun:~~

~~The menu was quite meat heavy but they can do a veggie version of Nouik Nain (steamed chayote dumplings).~~

Drinks wise, the Mauritian speciality is Alouda Vanilla, featuring Madagascar vanilla, sugarcane syrup, basil seeds, agar and milk, and yes, it’s as sweet as it sounds. They don’t serve alcohol but you’re welcome to BYOB, or get a drink from the new Longwave bar which has just opened right outside.

They’re closed on Mondays because the market where they buy their ingredients is closed, but they’re open from 11am to 9pm every other day. Get along there quick before the queue stretches out of the door and they open their twentieth branch in the Westfield food hall.

Sidewalk Stories at Hotel Elephant

Last night we went to a screening of a wonderful, moving film, and it’s coming to (near) Kennington on Friday.

Sidewalk Stories is a largely forgotten silent film from 1989 that inspired the director of The Artist. Imagine The Kid by Kennington’s own Charlie Chaplin, but set in the New York of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. It features great performances from writer/director Charles Lane and his very cute young daughter, and a truly impactful ending.

Carnival del KERB at The Paperworks

OK, The Paperworks is technically outside the borders of Kennington but it’s nearby, it’s run by North Kennington’s own Corsica Studios, and it’s great so we’re including it here.

It’s a temporary, outdoor street food, bar and music venue in a long-disused space owned by Peabody.

With a train line running along one side and the remnants of a factory at the other, it looks like something Secret Cinema would have built to host a dystopian film screening, but it’s not – the iron protruding from the brick wall is authentic industrial debris that has been there for decades.

It’s open Friday to Sunday evenings and tomorrow sees their third of four markets by street food specialists KERB (there are also more limited street food options on Saturdays and Sundays). We went along last Friday, when it was Time Out’s no. 1 thing to do in London. There were craft beers, ten or so food stalls, live music and DJs with a Latin flavour, and a cool crowd leaning young but covering all ages.

Once the weather gets cold the plan is to convert it into more of a covered space, then eventually flats will be built here, so make the most of it while it lasts.

Tomorrow’s event runs 5pm to 11pm at The Paperworks, 48-50 Newington Causeway (north of the Southwark Playhouse, on the other side of the road).

Corsica Studios

Corsica Studios is home to some of London’s finest underground dance nights, and what many hail as the best sound system in town. It’s an intimate club located in a warehouse-style space under a railway arch on Elephant Road in North Kennington, round the back of the Elephant & Castle shopping centre.

Here’s the bar, which serves Mexico’s finest Modelo Especials amongst other drinks:

This is the stage (when we went, Snakehips were playing, the future sound of London according to Radio 1):

Visiting Corsica is a flashback to how nightclubs used to be – dark, dingy, functional warehouses where anything could happen. The clientele are invariably young and cool. It’s all rather exciting. Let’s hope it survives the gentrification of Elephant & Castle and the re-development of the shopping centre (fellow North Kennington venue The Coronet is under threat).

Corsica recently launched a new open-air venue – The Paperworks – in partnership with The Peabody Housing Trust, featuring DJs, street food, craft beers, cocktails for £6 (like in the early noughties!) and giant Jenga and Connect 4. Technically it’s outside the borders of Kennington but it sounds like such fun that we’re planning to visit and report back.

Russell Brand tours Kennington

Another of our Kennington predictions for 2014 comes true – Russell Brand tours Kennington from 3 minutes 30 in this video:

La Chatica Colombian Café, Deli & Bakery

Back to London’s Latin American Quarter to visit La Chatica, a Colombian cafe, deli, bakery, and bar on Elephant Road in North Kennington.

La Chatica seems to have started as a business importing Latin American food before opening this cafe. They “use the finest South American ingredients” to make their version of the “much-loved” Pan de Bono (cheese bread), Pan de Yuca (another type of cheese bread) and Empanadas (the Latin American equivalent of a pasty).

So how does Latin American food shape up? Mexico and Argentina are justly famously for their cuisines. Brazil has some great restaurants. But elsewhere in the continent, it can be hard to find great food besides meat, fish, rice and salad. So La Chatica definitely feels authentic, with its baked goods wrapped in cellophane, rich in sugar and caramel. But if you don’t fancy those, you can just window shop the product displays. You’ll soon forget you’re under a railway arch in London:

La Chatica is open seven days a week, and they serve 100% Colombian coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, freshly made baked goods every day, and they have free wifi.

Save Our Subways

There are plans afoot to fill in the subways at the north roundabout in North Kennington. With our focus on the finer things in Kennington life, you might think we’d say good riddance to subways. You’d be wrong. Subways provide extra space for pedestrians. Without them, locals will face long waits at pedestrian crossings or, more likely in our case, dangerous dashes across up to six lanes of traffic. Where they’re confusing or aesthetically challenged, let’s have more signs, more lighting, and a fresh lick of paint rather than filling them with tonnes of concrete.

So we’re backing the Save Our Subways campaign.

This is our biggest foray yet into campaigning, but we’re brimming with confidence following the success of our campaigns to bring veggie burgers to Honest Burger, Waitrose to Kennington, and mindfulness to Sally White staff. Only this time we need your help.

Have a look at the “Boris Bodge” proposals here and register your opinions here, paying particular attention to question 4.

Photo courtesy of saveoursubways.org

the best restaurant in Kennington

Firstly, honourable mentions to other places that received votes: Mumbai Delight and Pizza Pazza are just outside the borders of Kennington, and we must visit Pico and revisit Koza – watch this space.

But the winner is…

1. The Lobster Pot
pros: one of London’s best seafood restaurants. It’s great fun from top to bottom and there’s nowhere else like it; you even get a special bib if you order the lobster
cons: it’s not cheap
hygiene rating: 5

The top ten best restaurants in Kennington – numbers 10 to 8

The votes have been ~~ignored~~ counted, so now we begin our countdown of the top ten restaurants in Kennington:

10. Mamuśka
pros: it’s great fun and cheap
cons: Polish milk bar food can be somewhat utilitarian
hygiene rating: 5

9. Gandhi’s
There are two renowned curry houses in Kennington – Gandhi’s and the Kennington Tandoori. Both do good quality food but we prefer Gandhi’s for their vegetable thali and their social media strategy (which is non-existent so preferable to Kennington Tandoori’s).
pros: you might see someone famous
cons: it will probably be a senior politician or Professor Green
Gandhi’s hygiene rating: 4
KT hygiene rating: 5

8. Bonnington Cafe
pros: this would be no. 1 for atmosphere
cons: the vegetarian and vegan food is inevitably hit and miss due to the rota of volunteer chefs
hygiene rating: 3

Kennington Runoff

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