We’ve been big fans of Solo Craft Fair since they opened in Elephant Stores (in Elephant Park) a few years ago, and were here to tell you about an upcoming yummy event. In case you don’t know, Solo is a collective of 60 mostly female owned small businesses selling all sorts of things you don’t really need but must have, from earrings to gift cards to candles.
On 31 March, Solo will be having another instalment of their Blind Date With a Book event. This got us very excited as many of us in the office have vast experience of blind dates (and on a number of those we wish we’d been blind ourselves) However, when we reached out to SoLo they explained that there is no actual dating involved. What it cleverly entails is selecting a wrapped up book with written clues about the book on the wrapping, and you select based on your moods. One might contain a £10 voucher. You then take the book away and go on dates with it by reading it. A lot cheaper than dating an actual human with no worries about drunken date photos popping up on Instagram.
As dating can be emotionally and physically draining, you could do a lot worse than grab a toastie or hot drink at Little Louie, also in Elephant Stores. And while you’re there why not pick up a a French school desk or a giant reclaimed letter ‘A’?
For the past fortnight Runoff staff have been fainting in the corridors in anticipation of the top spot. Or it could be the small amount of air available in our underground offices. We can announce that the best restaurant in Greater Kennington for the fifth year is Adulis in Oval. For over 25 years Adulis has served up tender and well cooked meats, huge kirchat platters, zingy stews, great service, and all the wait staff have great hair. And they were serving tasty vegetarian fare long before it was cool.
If Eritrean food is new to you, or even if it isn’t, the best launching point at Adulis is the sampler plate called ‘Kirchat’ (there is a vegetarian version as well). It is fundamentally a selection of their best meat and veg dishes served on a platter usually featuring Kifto, which is tender meat in Ghee and to die for. All of the dishes have have a sweet and sour, almost vinegary tinge to them. They gladly pimped our 2 person serving up to 3 as we had a third diner, and the pic is below. Please don’t let our bad photo below put you off, as not all Eritrean dishes look like cat food.
The dish above is served on a platter with a base of bread called ‘injera’, which is a leavened pancake made with sourdough (and if you run out you can get more for free). Almost all meals here are served with it and the whole shebang is to be eaten with your good hands (or cutlery for the timid). We also recommend the chicken stew ‘dorho’ with loads of herbs and further recommend the prawns. They also have some fine looking vegan options.
On the drinks front, we usually have the Kenyan beer ‘Tusker’ or a South African white. Having said that, the speciality of the house is their Adulis honey wine. We’ve had this previously and let’s just place it in the category of ‘experimental’. The place has a slightly retro Eritrean feel to it with memetoes both current and from the past. The staff are very friendly and a good chunk of the punters are (tick!) Eritrean themselves. The place also wafts with the aroma of their coffee and popcorn ceremony.
We can see the finish line, people! Recommending the best pizza in Greater Kennington is fraught with opinionated tension and might even cause small dough based riots in Kennington Cross. We’ve chosen Theos in Elephant because of its creative toppings, great sourdough base, their delicious Pannuozzo wood fired lunch sandwiches, tiramisu, and good price point. The runner up is the newish and quirky 400 Rabbitts, in Elephant Park.
Gorgonzola
Anchovy
On the pizza front my colleague had the aubergine and Gorgonzola. An adventurous choice; the aubergine was very soft and this was offset by the sharp hit of pecorino followed by the blue hit of Gorgonzola. Your scribe had a ‘my blood pressure needs to be checked’ salt kick of an anchovy, capers, olive and mozzarella pizza. All the salty elements were balanced well, and the best element of these pizzas is that they are served on a sourdough bread that is blistered on just the good side of being burned.
Theo’s recently won an award for best Tiramisu in London, and in our opinion it is well deserved. It ticked all the boxes of ‘Italian almost trifle’ with a perfect balance of strong coffee, dark chocolate, creamy mascarpone and served between layers of soft cream.
While writing this article several staff people became rather obsessed with the very notion of Theos’ panuozzo sandwich so we unlocked the door to our subterranean bunker and headed over there. Your scribe had an Ortiz tuna sandwich with olives and onions and mozzarella dripping out. My colleague had the sausage and gorgonzola with mushrooms. Mind you, we will need to run to and from Theos 65 times to burn off the calories, but it was delicious nevertheless.
And the four spot is nailed by by the extremely popular Korean/Japanese joint Kuma in Kennington Cross. We’ve seen the crowds at Kuma grow steadily since if first opened in 2019 due to its spicy, diverse and innovative fare served at reasonable prices. If you peer through the window on any given night you can see that the word is well and truly out.
We started with Kuma’s best known dish, Korean Fried Chicken. The options were – traditional, spicy, or sticky soy garlic and we chose the latter. The medium portion was huge and suitable for two. It had a great crispy crunch and slathered in a sticky soy garlic sauce. For the mains your scribe opted for the chicken bulgogi (say it like a pro…..boo-GOH-gee) which were very thin strips of chicken grilled on a BBQ coated with a hearty sauce called gochujang. Spring onion featured and it was consumed in lettuce wraps. It was billed as ‘hot’ and it certainly was, and so generous that your scribe couldn’t finish it.
Kim the intern had the Kimchi Bokkumbap as a main; a Korean fried rice dish with the national ingredient kimchi (spiced fermented cabbage) topped with barbecued beef strips. A bit like Chinese stir fry rice with a heavy dose of red chilli sauce. It was topped with a fried egg and came with miso soup, and again was a very generous portion. Best washed down with a Cass or Asahi Super Dry beer, but not for Kim as she’s only an intern and is lucky to get a Pepsi Max.
We love nothing more than sticking our noses where they don’t belong, and towards the end of the meal we went to the toilets and might have accidentally wandered into the kitchen. We can confirm that sous chef Mike (aka Mike-ro-Wave) was nowhere to be seen and everything is made fresh.
Keep up the goof work, Kuma. You’ve moved up one spot from 2023!
We’re taking a break from our highly subjective yet profoundly moving top 10 list to announce that the best Sunday roast in Greater Kennington is, for the fourth year in a row, the very cheffy 24 The Oval. It was also once again almost knocked off this spot for crimes against viniculture but we’ll get to that later.
What immediately strikes you about 24 is that it is truly a temple to good food and quality ingredients. The wait staff know about the food they’re serving, and the open kitchen is a symbol of their honest approach things. During lockdown, 24 transformed itself into a farm shop with a sideline in craft bottled beers. We were very pleased to see that this little tradition continues in 2023 and they sell everything from Cava to carrots.
As an ‘amuse-bouche’ each table of two is served with four miniature Yorkies served with a delicious gravy probably made with beef drippings (vegan options abound, however). My dining partner and Sunday Roast fanatic had the pork belly which was generous and nicely soft and sticky in all the right places. Your scribe had the lamb and the shoulder was served shredded, with the leg served in pink and fatty strips. As it is one of their specialities, the Yorkshire puddings were large and just the right side of crispy. Both roasts were served with more hearty gravy served from a saucepan. Also evidenced was pea puree with a pleasing consistency not unlike that of baby food.
What strikes you about 24 is that they go in for none of that ‘small sharing plates’ malarkey, the real star of the show being the very well cooked veg. In addition to those served with the roast, we were presented with so many additional veg items that they almost fell off the table. This included cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes which were perfectly crispy but with a soft centre. The carrots possessed an intense roasted flavour and savoy cabbage also popped in for a chin wag. An unexpected mystery guest for us were Jerusalem artichokes. The mains run between £22.50 and £26 which ain’t cheap, but we feel is worth it once in a while and the portions seemed endless.
24, we need to talk about something. You stand guilty of committing a crime pervasive in London restaurants at the moment. Namely, selling hugely overpriced wine. Your cheapest bottle is a not very cheap £30, which is almost 225% above the retail price. Granted, this is unchanged from 2023. We are letting you off the hook as there is a cost of living/wine crisis but we’re watching you *wags finger*! Otherwise you make a mighty fine roast and you know it.
And the number 5 spot is nailed by posh deli and restaurant Didi and Franc. The review below is from a gastronomic visit undertaken in November, 2023.
It’s been long overdue but we’ve finally paid visit to the little restaurant at Didi and Franc in Kennington Cross. For those not in the know, D&F is an upmarket deli/cheese/bread/wine shop that generally sells gorgeous foodie things that you have no practical use for but still want. The cheese section being particularly good. Didi and Franc are real people and usually on hand and possess a forensic knowledge of the food they sell and the items on the menu as they’re the ones who ordered and cook the stuff. The short and precisely primed dinner menu is Italian.
Karen from finance loves a mackerel, so we shared a smoked mackerel mousse which was light in texture but punchy in flavour, served with some of the delicious sourdough bread sold in the deli. Karen chose to follow this with a vegetarian (possibly vegan) option of mushroom and chestnut tortellini with pesto rosso, cavolo nero and chestnuts. Chestnut feels wonderfully autumnal so it’s nice to see this feature. The generously filled homemade tortellini having a rich nutty taste that went beautifully with a red pepper flavoured pesto and a bit of green hit from the cavolo nero. Karen got so excited that while in the midst of chewing she yelled out, to a shocked room, ‘this dish a triumph’! Or words to that effect.
Beef
Mackerel
Your scribe consumed beef shin and red wine tortellini with tomato sauce. This was next level cheffy stuff with a very rich, wine based tomato sauce and seven tortellini stuffed with beef shin so delicate that it melted before hitting the back of my palate. My tortellini was perfectly al dente with a touch of parmesan. Pumpkin pie was a surprise dessert not originally on the menu but that had just been rustled up by Franc himself. An American who later joined us declared it to be a world apart from Wal-Mart (we have no idea what this means but is probably a good thing): warming spices blending with the pumpkin puree and with a top-notch sweet pastry crust. Probably not too different to the pecan pie on the menu.
More experienced readers might recall that the premises now held by D&F was formerly an Oddbins and a place of sacred refuge after many a fraught team meeting here at Runoff towers. So when it first opened we were disappointed at the pearl clutchingly high price of their wines. Well can we confirm that either Didi or Franc got the message as the prices are now a bit more reasonable (but still high). And with a certain gift giving holiday just around the corner, D&F could be the perfect destination for your foodie friends. And they also do ‘make your own’ hampers.
The restaurant at D&F is open during the second half of the week and we strongly advise that you book as the first time we couldn’t get a seat.
If money were no object then Brunwisck House would nab the top spot, but as money DOES matter they’ve bagged the still respectable six slot. Please note that restaurants on this scale have menus that change almost daily. So what you read below (from 2023) might not still be available.
If you’ve ever noticed a large Georgian mansion which appears to be on the precipice of getting inhaled by skyscrapers in the Vauxhall gyratory, it is called Brunswick House (and we’ve written about it here) and for several years they have run a critically acclaimed restaurant, in addition to its main hustle of selling (very) high end architectural salvage.
The dining room sits effortlessly in a large space in Brunswick House selling mostly chandeliers, light fittings and other gorgeous things. For an upmarket restaurant, the clientele was surprisingly young in a kind of ‘please come to my book launch next week’ kind of way. And no sooner do we sit down than we are joined at the next table by no other than TV presenter Miquita Oliver and a gaggle of her gorgeous, hair flicking friends. They were a nice complement to our botanical and creative cocktails, the favourite being their house eucalyptus martini.
The menu at Brunswick House often requires a diction course or at least a dictionary. But fear not, the drilled to perfection serving staff can help you differentiate between a chicharron and a tardivo. And there is the very modern dilemma of trying to decipher a sharing plate from a mains. Highlights among the snack or starter sizes were the salt cod croquettes, the roasted leeks and the devilled eggs. The croquettes oozed with creamy salty fishiness, while the roasted leeks were winning for an innovative combination with a tangy sauce derived from red peppers and pecans. The devilled eggs had a seventies retro quality but the trout roe filling gave it a more on trend feel.
For the mains, your scribe had the roast cod with sea greens and spring vegetable chowder. The meaty and flaky cod was set off well with what appeared to be a tureen of well matched veg with an aniseed hit. A big hit on the main size dishes was the fresh maccheroni (note proper Italian spelling). This packed a big flavour hit with the curious sounding combination of roast chicken butter, wild garlic and bottarga (translation: grey mullet roe). Curious it was but definitely lovely – rich and satisfying.
Fancy Macaroi
Cod
And then, after a night spent with Maquita and her chums set amongst glittering chandiliers and food we couldn’t pronounce, our night was over and we were deposited into a bus fumed traffic gyratory in Vauxhall. But the wonderful food made it worthwhile. This kind of food is by no means cheap, but one of the few glories of sharing portions is that you can just pop in for a snack of two £5 plates and they’re fine with that.
We visited Kachori last summer and it is still going strong. But is it the best Indian in Greater Kennington?
We recently inspected swishy looking new Indian restaurant Kachori in Elephant Park which has opened with some buzz. From the outside it resembles a second rate Dishoom, but inside gives way to low lighting, dark woods, and a very inviting bar. So tempted were we by the bar that two of us kicked off the fun by ordering Indian espresso martinis. When they arrived the upbeat proprietor informed us that we could eat the cups that they were being served in. As edible crockery is a new and, frankly, groundbreaking proposition at Runoff Towers, we took him up on the offer. More on this later.
The proprietor we speak of is Brindar Narula, former executive chef of Michelin starred Gymkhana, but here offering much more affordable fare. We started with two sets of nibbles: methi namkeen and nan chips. An interesting alternative to poppadums, the methi are little strips of fenugreek flavoured crisps similar in appearance to an earthworm, offered with a dip. The nan chips are fried bread strips with another dip which looked not unlike pleasing shoe leather. Both were delicious with the nan chips being the particular hit with the table. Two portions were good for four people.
This is a very dark restaurant
Lamb
One of our group had the lamb biryani, and it arrived encased in a crust to seal in the flavour and juices. With an excellent balance of spices, this was rich and gorgeous with meltingly soft pieces of lamb. Your scribe had the west coast prawn masa swimming in a pool of mangosteen, coconut milk, and palm vinegar. Huge, juicy prawns with a powerful aniseedy note. A side of palak paneer (spinach with cheese) was warm and satisfying as was the methi tadka dal (yellow lentils) rounded off the meal as sides.
Brinder explained to our little group that while he is from Mumbai, the flavours at Kachori focus on dishes from the Northwest of India. This is modern Indian at its best, with ingredients popping up (Jalapenos! Truffle oil!) not encountered in most Indian joints. Towards the end of the meal Brinder added that our rice based cups would have dissolved after 40 minutes if we hadn’t drunk the contents and then eaten the cups. Right, like that was gonna happen.
Amici in Kennington Cross is a great survivor and has bagged the #8 spot. We feel for them, as first they were hit by the small issue of a pandemic (remember that?), then a flood in their basement closed the place for even longer. Then they went through a frankly bizarre ‘car boot phase’ where they sold everything from jewellery to tins of food. Luckily all three have passed and in its it’s latest incarnation Amici matches the classics from their (RIP) Persian restaurant Doost with the Mediterranean offerings of Amici. For a split second we had a nightmare vision of pomegranate pizza, but owner Houman explained that it’s just the greatest hits of each place. Whew.
Phil from IT had one of the specials, a meatball dish from the northern, Caspian region of Iran. It was markedly tart with a pomegranate and herb-based sauce, so a bit different from what we think of as “standard” Persian. It was served with fluffy basmati rice. Your scribe had a long grain rice dish with spicy squid. And of course, served with loads of dill. It was light and had a slightly nutty tone to it.
The mandarins at Runoff Towers usually yell at us if we order starters (which is now referred to as small plate), but co owner Sethi was able to tell us not only from where each dish originated and how it’s made, but even offered insight as how her family members have been making them for years. So we caved in and had a kind of Persian roasted bruschetta topped with aubergine, and a delightfully tomatoey aranchi rice bowls.
On a subsequent visit we indulged in some of the Italian offerings at Amici. We think their strengths lie in Persian fare, but if it’s Italian that you crave we can reccommend the lamb ragu tagliatelle and lasagne. Namaste….
The number ten spot has been grabbed by the Japanese canteen Taro at the bottom of Kennington Road. Part of the Greater Kennington firmament for over five years now, Taro consistently delivers authentic ‘Izakaya’, (roughly meaning ‘pub food’) very similar to the food you get in Japan, and is good value for money. They also have a menu more diverse than most Izakaya places (not always a good thing but it is in this case), which caters to varied tastes. Believe it or not there are a number of Japanese joints in our area, but this is reams above the lot, and militantly avoids fusion cuisine.
`Taro 2022
Taro 2024, still consistent!
Some Runoff staff have been to Japan and on a previous Taro visit we took KR freelance journalist Mark, who lived in Japan for years and served as our culinary attaché. We had sushi (both tempura-maki and other maki) which was fresh and generous on the fish side. We also had fried chicken (above), which was crunchy and equally meaty. For a veg angle we also indulged in juicy tofu steak, with a surfeit of ginger and wasabi. For sides we recommend onshinko pickles and gyoza dipped in soy vinegar. Both veg and meat gyozas are great. The salmon teriyaki bento box at the next table also caught our eye.
And if you’re lucky, Taro himself will be on hand to guide you through his dishes and can remind us all that sushi should never be served cold. And yes, Tesco have been tagged in this post.
