We imagine many of you have recently been saying ‘so just WHEN will a Filipino burrito bar/artspace/coffee joint with beer ever come to Kennington Cross’? Well the wait is over and we’ve just been blessed with  ‘Eat the Sunshine, Down the Sun’, which has replaced the not very good Café 303 in Kennington Cross.  ETSDTS reached out for a meeting to tell us a bit more about their venture, but of course we don’t take requests as that would make us no different to a DJ. Instead we submitted some questions to see if they reached the threshold of a clandestine yet glamorous visit from the Observer. And they have.

First things first ETSDTS —- we are LOVING the name. Eat the Sunshine refers to the café on the ground floor and Down the Sun to the gallery in the basement. ETSDTS is similar in nature to burrito fast food joints such as Tortilla or Chipotle (but cheaper) in that you pick your bowl/burrito and then build it according to your wishes. Down the Sun refers to the artspace downstairs. It was previously the kitchen and toilets of Café 303, and possessed a distinct aroma of ammonia and wet cat hair. It has now been transformed into a fragrant pop up gallery until 22 Nov featuring the sonic work of Cameron Graham. The artist is usually in residence in the evening.

Karen from Finance, resplendent in her Mounjaro shine, opted for a very healthy chicken salad bowl. The chicken was served as a whole thigh, brushed with lemongrass and oil. Added to the dish was an assortment of extras including pickled onions, corn salsa and papaya with a soy/vinegar dressing. It was all very wholesome and well seasoned. Karen declaimed, whilst excavating an onion from between her teeth ‘its just perfect for those on weight reducing injections’. Your scribe indulged in a burrito with braised pork belly glazed in a tangy soy sauce. With the extras, the overall tasting notes were rich and a bit spicy with the onions acting as a sweet counterbalance. This is Filipino food made from the heart.

ETSDTS is owned and operated by Sam, Nikki, and Angela. On our visit Sam and Nikki were working on the line with their lovely 6 year daughter (she wasn’t working). And of course a café in Kennington Cross wouldn’t be a café if it didn’t cater to caffeine addictions, and it has a number of cakes, coffees, and teas for the morning folk. ETDTS is open from 9:00 – 14:00 Tues to Sun for burritos and coffee.  For burritos and beer they open again from 17:00 – 23:00 Wed-Sat. We’re not sure how many local folk are drinking beer and buying art at 11pm on a weeknight, but let’s make this happen!

When we were forced to come into the office on Saturdays during the Pandemic our only source of human contact was either in chugging Heineken out of a plastic milk bottle in Kennington Cross or at Oval Farmers Market. In those heady ‘don’t touch me’ days the market snaked around St. Mark’s Church and was quite a force to be reckoned with. Owing to a number of factors, mostly rising rents, the market is much more proscribed than it used to be and we fear that it’s future could be in peril. This is where you come in.

Oval Farmer’s Market has a great range of fruit and veg, in addition to a great fishmonger (in a BOAT!), cheese stalls, lots of sweet stuff, bread, olives, chicken, and lovely decorative things like earrings.  In addition to French/Caribbean food truck Bokit’la. We of all people realise that the market isn’t exactly cheap, but the fruit and veg are priced competitively and it’s never a bad time to treat yourself to live organic fermented fennel!

Oval Farmers Market is open every Saturday from 10am to 3pm and is across the street from Oval tube. And remember, Oval Farmers Market needs you. Tesco does not need you. Not even the upcoming M&S Foodhall in the new Elephant shopping centre needs you. 

Durning library in Kennington Cross has a series of periodic talks which are a good way to build brain cells. We adore the simple community hall feel of these events (scones! Tea! Wine!) as it takes us back to a halcyon world 20 years and 200 miles north of Greater Kennington, where you didn’t have to worry getting mowed down by a Lime bike on the pavement after sidestepping the remains of car parts from a fatal accident.  

On 20 October the library will be host to a talk by Philip Norman about the Manning photo archive, which we wrote about a few months ago. Until very recently the Manning’s studio was in Windmill Row, Kennington Cross and when it ceased to exist they donated 500,000 slides to the Lambeth Archives. The Manning’s were jobbing photographers so most of the photos were commissioned by the people depicted in them, in addition to a few random celebrities. Also in the mix are also some intriguing shots of Greater Kennington and beyond from days gone by. Lots of amazing ideas if your Halloween look is ‘Barbara Windsor going to a dance in 1965’. Admission is £3, bless.

As part of Black Heritage Month, on 17 Nov. the library will be hosting Nicola Walker as she talks about her new book ‘Killer Instincts’. Walker is a barrister and now a Crown Court judge. Using her experiences to give the book thrilling authenticity, it follows underdog barrister Lee Mitchell as he pursues justice in a tale that also explores the complex interplay of race, class and authority. We here at the Observer know quite a bit about killer instincts as it’s the feeling we have every time we look at our payslip.

This event is a month away so put it in that diary we’ve always been telling you to get. This event is free, so just turn up. If you happen to be the OCD type you can book a free ticket via the link to Nicola above.

As Part of Open House London week, we recently paid a much desired visit to the mysterious International Maritime Organization (IMO) in Albert Embankment. We knew we’d struggle to find an office colleague to join us on this rather nerdy outing, so the subject of the email was ‘who’d like to go cruising in Vauxhall’? Without even reading the email, we received quite a few confirmations from our male staff and, to our surprise, a few females. They were a bit crestfallen when we met in front of that giant ship’s bow sticking out of the Albert Embankment pavement.

The IMO is a specialised agency of the United Nations and is the global authority responsible for setting standards for the safety, security and environmental requirements of ships. The core of their work is concentrated on safety at sea (eg hijackings), cooperation, and ensuring that standards are united to maximise ship to port interface. Their work increasingly focusses on greenhouse gasses and sustainable shipping. And no, this doesn’t include the crisis you experienced on your Tenerife cruise when the umbrella flew out of your cocktail and landed in the sea.

The IMO building is from 1983 and has a delightful brown and smoked glass chandelier aura which had us humming to ‘Karma Chameleon’ as we strolled through the corridors with an increasingly dejected staff group. There’s a core group of administrators who work full time in the building and their work is primarily to organise 20 delegate meetings and to receive over 10,000 people a year. This is a daunting task, especially when considering the translation services it demands. When we entered the assembly hall it reminded us of a diminutive United Nations with the country names in front of the delegates. Paul, finally perking up, lowered the tone by yelling ‘oh my god, this is just like EUROVISION!’.

To be brutally honest, as we left the IMO it dawned on us that we knew about as much about this cryptic place as when we came in. However, armed with all the facts and objectives outlined above, we hope it has enlightened yourselves more than it did our staff, who hopefully topped off their Sunday with a bit of cruising of their own. We don’t judge.