Author Archives: Kennington Runoff

Lambeth Country Show 2024

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Owls! Bouncy castles for adults! Vegetables that look like Nigella Lawson! Clutch your pearls folks, as we’re about to recommend something that involves leaving Greater Kennington.

The Lambeth Country Show (the term ‘country’ being used loosely as it’s in Brixton) is a yearly event held in the hilly enclaves of Brockwell Park and will be on Saturday and Sunday, 8&9 June, 1pm to 8pm, and it’s great fun. The fair is a wonderful mash up of Lambeth life including an eclectic (and loud) live stage featuring Jazz, disco and reggae. It has a fun fair for the kiddos, locally produced things to buy, and is totally free.

A real highlight of the show is the marquee featuring award winning vegetables, flowers and plants. If you see a scrum they’ll likely be huddled around the puntastic figures which depict topics of the day in veg form, and are so famous even the Gardening Museum is in on it.  We had a particular soft spot for Tina Turnip last year. If you can’t make it to the fair until the end of a hot Sunday afternoon then I’d give this tent a miss as the award winning veg starts to resemble something you’d find in the back of your fridge after 5 weeks.

The animals are another real treat of the show and something we rarely get to see as urban dwellers (especially the kids). Sheep, owls, birds of prey are on hand to see and, umm.. smell and you might even get to play with them. And if you get homesick and forlorn when you’re down there just visit our friends at Vauxhall City Farm who usually have their alpacas

You will be cheating yourself if you don’t partake in a bit of jerk chicken action when you’re down in the park, as there are a million options and all the vendors are local. Having said that, its also a good idea to take your own food and drink to save time and money.

TOP TIP: We take the Number 3 and get off one stop after Brixton tube and then walk it.

Panuozzo at Theos

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During a recent lunch break we paid a visit to Theos Pizzeria in Elephant. You may be aware that for two years we’ve crowned Theos as having the best pizza due to their creative toppings and sourdough base. However, with metabolisms not being what they used to be, for lunch we dropped the pizza and opted for their signature sandwich, the panuozzo. 

Described as a wood fired sandwich, Theos use the same delicious slow fermented pizza dough but reformat it into a sandwich-like form. Your scribe had the sausage and gorgonzola panuozzo, which was also rammed with creamy and salty gorgonzola, grilled mushrooms, mozzarella chunks, and rocket. On the side was a red chilli which packed a real punch, so it was used sparingly. 

Matilda from the digital subscriptions team sometimes gets overwhelmed with too many options, but with just four handy panuozzos to chose from she had the broccoli with anchovies, mozzarella and pangranatto. Pangranatto being a sort of crunchy garlicky breadcrumb, that might seem odd in a sandwich but was actually a nice crunch to complement the soft broccoli and mozzarella. There was a good but not overpowering flavour of anchovy to round things out and of course the bread itself was sublime.

The panuozzo is £6.50 which when you think about it, is about as much as a fancy sandwich at Pret nowadays. Matilda wanted a glass of wine but when we reminded her what happened the last time she had wine at lunch we had water and the bill was under £15. And with the mounds of cheese and filling kept us filled until dinner. As no one actually pays for this site, as we were leaving we asked Matilda exactly what she does at the office. She smiled and said coyly, ‘you know, I INVOICE’. OK. 

Barbarella and FlourishFest

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We have two very different events taking place in Greater Kennington this weekend which, to say the least, appeal to divergent crowds. This is fortunate as they’re happening at exactly the same time. 

This first is taking place at the glorious Cinema Museum, and is perhaps the most kitsch and camp film of all time; Barbarella. Jane Fonda plays Barbarella, who is sent from earth in the year 4000 to find scientist Durand Durand and crash lands on a distant planet only to be constrained by children with mechanical dolls. After escaping, Barbarella finds herself in Sogo where a new sin is created every hour. In Sogo she comes across a sex organ keyboard, a lesbian queen who can make her dreams come true, and a group of ladies who dispense the Essence of Man through a giant hookah pipe. Sounds like a normal day in the Runoff office. 

If you’re struggling to find Barbarella even remotely plausible, it will be introduced by means of a curated talk beforehand. The film also has a banging 60’s soundtrack. Barbarella is on Sunday, 19 May at 14:00 and tickets can be nabbed here. It will be shown on it’s original 1968 Technicolor print. We have no idea what this means but it must be important because its on their website. 

Roots and Shoots is a wonderful UNESCO award winning charity and vocational hub dedicated to educating disaffected young people aged 16 -25 in Lambeth and Southwark and preparing them for the world of work through one year internships in areas such as horticulture and retail. We wrote about them in 2019. It’s also a green space for urban biodiversity and is frequently visited by school groups eager to learn more about plants and gardening. 

This weekend is Roots and Shoots charity spring festival, FlourishFest, which sounds like great fun. There will be happenings for all ages such as beekeeper demonstrations, food stalls, printmaking and art workshops. We think most of our readers don’t have little kids (rather, we hope they don’t) so with these events we always road test them for adults. There are a number of activities just for us grownups such a talk on sustainable gardening, growing things in small spaces, and a guerrilla gardening and seed bomb making workshop (now that sounds fun), and a talk on peat free gardening. 


FlourishFest is on Sunday, 19 May from 11:00 to 14:00. Admission is just £3 for adults and £1 for kids. We’re unsure if a sex organ keyboard will make an appearance but as this is Greater Kennington anything could happen. 

Tim Hetherington at IWM

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Feeling cultured for the first time in 2024, we recently paid a visit to our very own world class museum-we-bet-you’ve-never-been-to, the Imperial War Museum. What drew our attention was an exhibit of the work of photographer Tim Hetherington, who was technically a war photographer but much more interested in the personalities and back stories of the people in front of him.

As an independent journalist, Hetherington joined rebel convoys in west Africa, bunked up with GI’s in Afghanistan in 2007, chronicled droughts and harvests, and captured the early days of the Arab spring in Libya (which cost him his life). And while he was at it, managed to win four World Press Photo Awards and nab an Oscar nomination. As you do… 

What this show is not about, consistent with the ethos of the War Museum itself, is a glorification of warfare. Hetherington’s concept was more sociological and, as the title indicates, about storytelling. In the videos that augment the exhibit, Hetherington and his colleagues discuss his photography and the unique way in which he obtained his images. Unlike other photographers, he never asked his subjects to pose in front of a silent lens, preferring instead to interact with the subject, even if they didn’t share a language.  

Especially if you are a militant pacifist, this kind of journalism is of crucial importance as it exposes the trials and injustices of society to a rich, safe first world who would rather just ignore them. But ignore this show at your peril, as it will keep you thinking. Storyteller: Photography by Tim Hetherington is on now until 29 September and, like all wonderful things in life, is totally free. 

Bonnington Cafe and Centre

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We recently made a much overdue visit to Vauxhall institution Bonnington Café in Bonnington Square. We had been a bit concerned that BC had not survived the pandemic but it has emerged phoenix like and is part of a larger Bonnington Centre, and but on that later. 

Bonnington Café was established over forty years ago as a not for profit endeavour and still serves its original purpose of serving affordable (£5 starters £12 mains £5 desserts) vegetarian and vegan fare prepared by a rotating cast of chefs. They also have a BYOB policy to make it even more affordable. At the moment the chefs are creating American comfort food, vegan Polish fare, and locally sourced favourite dishes. Our night was led by Syrian chef Hind Danoun, who passionately cooks her mother’s Syrian vegetarian dishes. She’s in the kitchen on Fridays and some other nights. 

The menus at BC are purposefully very small, and showcase what the chef is working on at the moment. Cliff from the HR team chose the grilled aubergine with tahini and paprika sauce topped with nuts for a starter and he called it ‘sublime’. The tahini was described as creamy and smooth, no clagginess: a light dish of splendidly umami flavours. The lentil kebab main didn’t feel remotely like a kebab to Cliff, so an odd name: lentil steak would have been closer. This was lightly spiced, and benefitted from its accompaniment of yoghurt sauce and a great sumac sauce that made the dish.

Your scribe had the fattoush salad with pomegranate molasses, which was bright and sharp: a little too sour for some tongues but a nice contrast of leaf and crunch. Meanwhile, majouka felt rather like a Syrian take on a vegetarian biryani – which was a result that your scribe could get on board with: simple, tasty, hearty.

Overall, both in terms of pocketbook and what we consumed we left feeling healthy. Well, maybe that £7 bottle of Tesco Malbec we knocked back in half an hour wasn’t so healthy, but your place is not to judge. If you don’t fancy a meal at the BC then pop over to Bonnington Square itself for a bit of a wonder, as it’s a verdant urban subtropical oases with a storied past that we wrote about last year.

The Bonnington Centre has an eclectic sounding programme of activities on the first floor including one called ‘Death Café’, which rather reminded us of the time when Phil brought homemade brownies into the office. They also have yoga and film nights. On our night there were a motley and hungry group of amateur musicians coming downstairs for a bite, while as we left we were serenaded by the lovely tones of other musicians upstairs.  

Crossing the Thames (or not)

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For those of you who are in the enviable position of being free in the daytime, or are just unemployed, we’ve unearthed a fascinating sounding walk along the Lambeth side of the Thames called ‘Crossing the Thames’ (don’t worry there is no actual crossing to the scary north side). 

Our patch of north Lambeth was created by bridges and horse drawn ferries across the Thames. This nerdy yet captivating sounding walk tells the told and untold stories of crossings across the river and how they changed our community. Also included will be useless but very trivia such as why the bridges are painted in certain colours. 

If walking around pointing at bridges isn’t exactly your vibe, Lambeth Tour Guides also have a range of other fascinating sounding walks around our patch and further afield. Of particular note is ‘Unseen Vauxhall’ on 13 June which we might just attend. And no points for finding us as you don’t know what we look like. 

This walk was supposed to take place next week, but has been postponed until 7 June owing to rail action. Tickets can be scored for £12 here. Trust us, we tried to get you good people a discount using our line ‘but don’t you know -we’re INFLUENCERS’! However, this rarely works and is often met with outright derision.  

The Tommyfield

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As all of the Runoff staff love a bargain, we recently paid a visit to the Tommyfield pub in Kennington Cross to take advantage of their £45 for 2 steak and Malbec night, which is available on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We invited Karen from Finance to dine with us as we have a lot of time for her, and she needed a night out after some  damaging comments about her Excel skills.

We started with some sourdough and olives (not included) which were a perfect complement to what was upcoming. The steak options are rump and sirloin and your scribe chose the latter as it costs more and therefore created an increased thrill of saving money. The options for sauce are chimichurri, peppercorn or blue cheese, and the peppercorn was chosen for its sharp, gravy like tangyness. Both steaks were served rare and we were pleased with the result: It was a good quality steak, browned on the outside and just pink enough in the middle. And a big slab for what you’re paying. 

On sides front, your scribe had a creamy, buttery mash and Karen had the chunky chips, describing them as not too chunky, crisp yet fluffy, and the rocket salad was particularly well dressed . She chose the chimichurri sauce and was quite proud that the bit of Argentina on the plate matched nicely with the lovely and full bodied Argentinean Malbec (which is £28 itself) – Finca La Colonia. In fact, so enthusiastic was Karen that she proclaimed, while in the middle of chewing her rare stake, ‘this is so amazing that I’ve totally forgotten about those spreadsheet comments’. OK. 

The Tommyfield is run by independent south London based Three Cheers Pubs, who run eight other swishy yet beautiful pubs, mostly in Clapham/Balham. A few years ago we met the owners at a pub wine tasting that we snuck into attended and they love what they do. So next time you’re considering Kennington Cross pub options, give them a try as we love the little guy as opposed to a pub run by a mega chain (without saying names, it’s that one across street with outdoor seating). 

The Tommyfield also have a star studded and cracking comedy night that we frequent where we’ve seen the talents of Harry Hill (he was there only this week), Joe Lycett and Aisling Bea. And the punters look like they just stepped off the set of ‘The Apprentice’, which is half the whole event.

And if steak isn’t your thing, they have two other special nights as well…

You are Going to Die @ Southwark Playhouse

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Life is hard, and once in a while all you really want to do is catch a play with a naked man sprinting around a smoking toilet. Such a play has arrived in our anointed patch and while this specific production might not be your pot of tea, it might open your eyes to the more mainstream offerings over at both branches of the Playhouse.  Of course we’ve checked it out for you.

You Are Going to Die was the breakout play at Edinburgh Fringe last year and was received with rave reviews. With the use of his body, the actor/creator takes us through a series of nude vignettes which feature different people at different ages. Themes of climate change, rejection and alienation in a fast moving world are abiding themes. His presentation is at times vulnerable and at others menacing and anarchic. With all this heavy material the piece (all 70 minutes of it) is, ironically, often humorous, especially when he addresses the audience directly. During our show he was able to tell off two late arrivals by only using his body. 

If penises swinging about isn’t exactly what you’re looking for on a night out, Southwark Playhouse has two local houses (the Newington Butts venue is shiningly new and we’ve reviewed it here) with a wide variety of quickly changing shows. At the moment they are also showing in interesting new play about football fans and in May an ‘adult fairy tale’ about Sappho. 

You Are Going to Die is on now until 4 May and tickets are £26. We can assure you, it won’t be boring but it isn’t for everyone. And the Borough outlet has a cracking bar which is open to the public.

Spending a Penny

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Many of you are probably thinking ‘will the Runoff EVER get around to doing a piece on public conveniences?’ Well, due to the popularity of a few Insta pics (if you haven’t already, please join us there as we’re loads of fun)  we’ve decided to create an article about the long closed Victorian public convenience in Kennington Cross, which is currently on the rental market.

The Kennington Cross WC was engineered by B. Finch & Co. in 1898 in a Victorian movement to make London a more hygienic place (read ‘so blokes wouldn’t pee in the street’). It features an array of beautiful marble and iron urinals with a glass tank on top, three cubicles, a mosaic tile floor and a booth for attendants. To keep the critters occupied while nature calls, at the street level there is a horse/cattle trough (1880) that precedes the WC. Sadly, Lambeth Council closed the toilet in 1988 but since then a headstrong group of volunteers have endeavoured to keep it falling to middle earth. Whoever rents this unique property will need to be conscious that it is, thank the urinal gods, Grade 2 listed. 

Over the past ten years, clever people have been turning disused toilets into equally clever things. There is a cute mini chain of wine/charcuterie bars called ‘WC’ and we’ve visited the one in Bloomsbury. The closest ours has to come to anything that interesting is when it was a pop up arts venue called ‘Arts Lav’ in 2017. At 387 square feet we think it might be too small to be converted into a bar or even a tea shop, but one person who got in touch told us that he was married in the toilets, so in reality it could be converted into anything. Whatever it might be, it will hopefully be developed into something that we can all visit and appreciate.   

A New Look Kings Arms

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At the Runoff we don’t usually take requests as that would make us no better than, say, a wedding singer. However, we’re nothing if not inconsistent, so when the King’s Arms in Kennington Lane asked us to visit their new beer garden as it is the biggest in Kennington that left us feeling intrigued, so we popped open the hatch to our subterranean office and toddled over there to see if the statement was true. 

The inside of the King’s Arms has its usual group of locals who’ve been going there for a long time (maybe not when it was a gay bar), but the very spacious outside is a younger brood who were watching sport on the many TV’s and generally just enjoying themselves. All of the spaces, including 4 enclosed banquettes, are bookable. And since it is fully outside it isn’t as noisy as more enclosed spaces. The drinks are nothing to get too excited about, but we had a very well priced and drinkable Cruzcampo, from Spain. People were also having cocktails and wine, 

As the weather gets nicer, al fresco King’s Arms is a good alternative to being indoors, and an even better alternative to a certain pub in Kennington Cross with outdoor seating that masquerades as independent, but is in reality just another outlet of a faceless mega chain. King’s Arms, if you’re reading this (and if not, you really should be) the only area of development we suggest is to take down the fencing facing Kennington Lane so the world can see that you, in fact, have the largest beer garden in Greater Kennington. Salud!