Tag Archives: Top ten best restaurants in Kennington

brunch at The Ragged Canteen

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The Ragged Kitchen - kenningtonrunoff.com

The Ragged Canteen at Beaconsfield Art Gallery featured in our Top Ten Best Restaurants in Kennington list last year for their delicious vegetarian lunches. Now they’ve become the latest Kennington venue to offer all-day brunch on a Saturday, joining The Tea House Theatre, Counter, and Toulouse Lautrec (The Duchy Arms don’t start theirs till 12.30pm, while the Tommyfield and Brunswick House only do breakfast in the mornings).

Here’s the menu from a couple of weeks back:

The Ragged Canteen Saturday brunch menu - kenningtonrunoff.com

We had a green goddess pesto and roasted vegetable toastie, and this warm winter vegetable minestrone (actually more of a stew than a soup) with spelt bread, which is a typical Ragged Canteen kind of dish:

The Ragged Canteen - winter vegetable minestrone with spelt bread - kenningtonrunoff.com

If you want Eggs Benedict or buttermilk pancakes, this is not the place for you, but if you’re in the mood for something hearty and vegetarian, you won’t do better than the Ragged Canteen. Plus the service is friendly, you’ll have no problem getting a table, and the building is great.

Kennington curry houses

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We can highly recommend two curry houses just outside the borders of West Kennington: Mumbai Delight on South Lambeth Road which makes a point of using natural ingredients and has a good vegetarian selection, and Hot Stuff on Wilcox Road, a family-run, BYOB restaurant that gets very busy thanks to the reputation of its food and its low prices.

Kennington itself has two renowned curry houses: Kennington Tandoori and Gandhi’s. Both trumpet their celebrity fans. Gandhi’s displays Seb Coe, Richard & Judy (whose Channel 4 show used to be filmed in Kennington), regular Kennington Oval visitor John Major, Kennington residents Ken Clarke and Jack Straw, former Kennington resident Geoff Hoon, Gordon Brown, Jerry Springer, Neil and Christine Hamilton, and a former prime minister of Bangladesh in its window.

Richard & Judy, John Major, Jerry Springer, Ken Clarke in the window of Gandhi's, Kennington

Kennington Tandoori has a more discreet rotating selection featuring Matt Lucas, Jon Bercow and various cricket players. The whole front of the restaurant opens up which is welcome on a warm evening. And the owner responds to criticism on TripAdvisor which makes for an interesting read.

Kennington Tandoori - kenningtonrunoff.com

A plot to oust Gordon Brown as prime minister is believed to have been hatched by Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt in a private room at Gandhi’s, which perhaps inspired its new colour scheme of black and blood red, not to mention the LOOK RIGHT sign on the pavement outside.

Gandhi's - Kenningtonrunoff.com

Beaconsfield Art Gallery and the Ragged Canteen

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Beaconsfield, based in a former Victorian Ragged School, is the biggest and architecturally most impressive of the surprisingly large number of art galleries in Kennington, although it’s likely to be trumped by Damien Hirst’s new gallery which is due to open just up the road in 2014.

Art at Beaconsfield tends towards the modern and the conceptual, and they are funded by the Arts Council.

On weekday lunchtimes their Ragged Canteen serves really great vegetarian food (at other times they serve drinks and cakes). In an area with various good veggie cafes in surprising places – see also The Garden Museum and the Jamyang Buddhist Centre – The Ragged Canteen is the best. If only it were open more often and for longer.

The door is permanently locked – ring the bell to get in.

Beaconsfield and The Ragged Canteen - kenningtonrunoff.com