Pullens Yard Open Christmas 2025

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Kennington Observer

As frequent readers are all too aware, we here at the Observer love nothing more than anonymously sticking our noses where they don’t belong. So why not join the merry ranks of middle class white people and partake of our passion/dysfunction? We’re talkinng, of course, of the great Pullen’s Yard Christmas Open Studios weekend taking place on 5-7 December (that’s this weekend, folks) in Walworth.

Pullens Yards (Clements, Peacock and the large Iliffe Yard) are an amazing collection of 1880’s workhouses which were originally designed for the people who lived in the nearby Pullens Estate. We wrote about the fascinating squatting history of the estate a few years ago. Instead of being converted into luxury flats, the Yards serve the same purpose as they did 140 years go, and the cabinet makers and blacksmiths have been replaced by potters, jewellery makers, card makers and folks who make things that smell nice or wrap up for a gift. We once bought moth balls disguised as little knitted mice. And as we know crystals are just rocks, but the stall holders might just convince you that they have the power to heal.

The studios at Pullens Yards are usually not open to the public, but twice a year they fling their doors open to give us a glimpse into their creative universe. The artists are more than happy to show you what and how they create, and of course you can buy what’s on show. And buying is by no means compulsory, as at the end the day these folks just want to show off how clever they are and it’s totally free. Have we mentioned how much we love free?

A visit to the Yards is a fun way to spend a morning or a late afternoon searching for quirky and unnecessary things. In the past we’ve encountered live music, food for sale, a bar provided by Orbit Brewery(!) and live music. A wet Friday night is a particularly evocative time. And who knows, you just might discover a previously unrealised desire to own a necklace made out of forks or a room deodoriser fashioned as a piece of cheese.

Pullen’s Open Studios is open Friday evening and in the daytime over the weekend. And if you’re hungry or want some tea, check out the great and very quirky Electric Elephant Café. And no, its not a charity shop. It just looks like one.

The Coffee Shop @ Park College

Posted on October 6, 2025 by Kennington Observer

Like most people, when we’re set free from our subterranean publishing prison at lunchtime we’re often at a loss for what to do. With the weather getting worse its becoming impractical to sit in Kennington Park, even if the eye candy running past is alluring. So we’re headed around the corner to revisit an old friend.

Park College is an establishment that helps young people with additional needs (primarily autism) enter the world of work. On a previous visit we saw young people gardening, repairing bikes, and working in a design space. The Coffee Shop is for folks interested in the hospitality/catering trade, and the students cook and serve all the food with the assistance of dedicated staff. This includes sandwiches, muffins, cakes, paninis and quiches. And they’re mightily proud of their hot beverages and happy to help with your selection.

With our regular lunch partner Karen from Finance still under the effects of Manjourno, her sidekick Pippa decided to plump for the special of the day, which was gnocchi with courgettes. This turned out to be a good sized serving of plain potato gnocchi with a light cream sauce flavoured which was was served with two salads alongside on the plate. Pippa found the iceberg lettuce and avocado to be a bit bland but the shredded carrot with tahini was much more interesting. After calling her an ‘ingrate’ under our breath, we reminded Pippa that its nigh impossible for find a healthy lunch for £7 in Greater Kennington.

Your much more grateful scribe had the mozzarela and sun dried tomato sandwich. Served between two salty slices of homemade focaccia bread. The tomatoes were oily and the mozzarela plentiful. It came with a quite sinister looking green smear on the side, which turned out to be lovely avocado. And just £5! There are various hot drinks available, again keenly priced, and a selection of soft drinks that focuses on juices or fizzy drinks with a natural bent – including a tasty can of sparkling apple with ginger.

The Park cafe also has an adorable giftshop selling cards, paintings, coffee mugs, and handbags made from crisp bags. Because after all, in the parallel universe in which Tesco resides, Christmas is apparently just around the corner.

400 Rabbits

Posted on September 18, 2025 by Kennington Observer

Located in the heart of trendy Elephant Park, Karen from Finance and your scribe find ourselves revisiting pizza palace 400 Rabbits, the newest in a south London collection of four pizzerias. Going for the youthful and fun market (us), the design aesthetic at 400 Rabbits is very much ‘post industrial meets aisle 6 at Ikea’. From the outset service was similarly bright and welcoming with tap water freely offered. When we discovered the negronis were only £6.50 we ditched the water and we can report that said negronis had the precise bittersweet bite you expect of the drink, served simply in a small glass with ice and no faff. Lots of other cocktails are available. As we’re journalists of the classiest ilk, with the negronis we enjoyed delicious Catalan olives.

Your scribe ordered the anchovy, tomato based pizza. It came with an abundance of silvery anchovies and flecked with plump capers. You can imagine the umami kick. To complement these were the addition of shallots, black olives and rosemary. All worked together very well. The crust is slow fermentation sourdough, crispier and more robust – although thin – than the chewy Neapolitan style along the road at Theo’s. There are plenty of toppings choices in weird and wonderful combinations that we imagine change regularly given that a whole section was devoted to “Summer Pizzas”. Walnuts and kimchi being just two of them. Karen’s customary grab for a slice was countered by a deft fork stab of her index finger.

As Karen is currently having a ‘Mounjaro moment’ we’re surprised that she accepted our offer for dinner in the first place. Exhibiting profound discipline, she opted for a smaller pizza accompanied by a salad. She had the beef which came with shallots and guindilla chilies as well as the ground beef, so again a complex topping portfolio. Karen enjoyed the pizza but nevertheless smothered it in the free chili oil, which perhaps indicates that the Mounjaro hasn’t kicked in just yet. As Karen keeps banging on about tomatoless pizza (what’s the POINT!) we promised to add that some pizzas are indeed white, so you’ve been warned.

A very good pizzeria overall, but will it make our Top 10 List ™ in the new year? All pizzas are around £14 with £10 pizzas on Tuesday. The best bit is they make their own gelato, but that didn’t fit into Karen’s new lifestyle so we passed.

The Firecracker Lunch Special

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Kennington Observer

When your scribe made a request to review the lunch options at Kennington Cross Chinese eatery Firecracker, the Observer finance director Adam said ‘you need to bring your own lunch’. When it was pointed out that a selection of rice or noodle dishes is just £8.50 or £10.00 if you add a soft drink or side dish he jumped out of seat and said ‘I’m your man’, and out of our secret office bunker we emerged.

On arrival at Firecracker we were greeted by a young waiter who had a ‘my parents own this gaff’ attitude to service. And to complement this swagger he had an amazing head of hair, reminding us somewhat of a Vileda mop. Adam was feeling spicy and chose belly pork and French bean with chilli bean sauce. He pronounced this properly spicy with plenty of beans and pork along with slightly sticky but lovely jasmine rice. Adam also decided, using his own words, to ‘splash out’ by ordering a side dish of prawn toast which was crunchy and abundant with sesame seeds.

Your scribe went old school and had sweet and sour chicken. The flavour profile was tangy and sweet, with the chicken very slightly battered and well combined with the tender vegetables. Between the rice bowls, noodle bowls and salads there were about 15 dishes to choose from, all at the same price. We didn’t tell Adam at the time, but given that the portions are perfectly decent you don’t need a side dish, even if some prawn toast did sound tempting. Not that offered us any, mind you.

Firecracker should be packed out but it was quiet on our visit on a Thursday lunchtime. Service was laid back in style, even a little sparse, but the food came quickly and was well presented. Let’s make this great Kennington lunch special more of a big deal and give the staff something to get excited about other than having great hair.

Mr. Charcoal – The Real Deal

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Kennington Observer

Mr. Charcoal is a very authentic Chinese in north Kennington focussing on dishes from northeast China and is by no means Cantonese takeaway fare. You might know it by its previous incarnation, Seveni. We recently paid a visit to see what the barbeque buzz is about. What first strikes the patron is the presence of cheesy Chinese pop music (tick), actual Chinese diners (triple tick), and enormous mutant looking fish in a tank (quadruple tick). In fact, it creates the almost immersive experience of being in a Beijing café.

As a starter new intern Nick and your scribe had chicken hearts. We’d never actually eaten heart before, and it can only be described as kind of like a crispy meatball. It was heavily seasoned with cumin (as a lot of dishes are), sesame, and a great deal of pepper. We contemplated ordering pig brain, aorta, intestines, or duck blood but then thought that the table would end up looking more like a crime scene. So we stuck with more mainstream dishes.

The main event for us was a shared stew pot described as Chinese sauerkraut with pork belly strips. Our server had helpfully advised that this was good to share so we teamed it with some egg fried rice. If you don’t like a lot of spice, this is a good choice: plenty of flavour in the cabbage, not exactly sauerkraut, a little more soup-like and the most delicious thin slices of pork belly somewhat of the fashion you might find floating in a bowl of Japanese ramen. This was sufficient for two people with the tasty egg fried rice also in a shareable portion. We also indulged on the lamb skewer. Forgetting protocol, Nick tried to split them in half until he realised, after your scribe stabbed him with a skewer, that Observer staff get more than interns. It was juicy, very cuminy, and melted in the mouth.

Half the tables at Mr. Charcoal come with BBQ’s at your table, but we weren’t that adventurous. Mr Charcoal can seem a little intimidating on first impressions, and there is not much of a website and what there is carries only a limited menu, half in Chinese and scant information beyond that, but that’s half the fun. Then, after an evening imagining ourselves to be in a little known café in Beijing with smiling locals eating every organ available, we were mercilessly disgorged onto a bus fumed Kennington Road where we almost got knocked down by a 59 bus. So much for dreaming.

The Bouquet and Beans Breakfast

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Kennington Observer

We recently escaped from our publishing house hatch to pay a visit to Bouquets and Beans in front of St. Anselms Church in Kennington. And unless you’ve been stuck behind a hatch yourself, you’ll be aware that it is run by the hardest working man in Kennington, Abraham.

For this breakfast excursion your scribe was accompanied by office ‘fun guy’ Phil from accounts. We both ordered the savoury stuffed croissant. It was delivered to us grilled, as requested, and this explains why the croissant in the photo looks like Phil sat on it (and not for the first time). To add to the order Phil said ‘can I get a pint with that’. Your scribe tactfully pointed out to Phil that this a breakfast venue, in addition to it being 9:30 in the morning. He then ordered a coffee and your scribe had a tea.

Our croissants were filled with a generous heap of high quality mozzarella cut from a ball, sun dried tomatoes, and a big dollop of pesto. It was almost a shame to see it melted and grilled, but the grilling brought out the buttery feel in the mouth. Plus, it gives us a flimsy excuse to go again and get the non grilled version. At £4.50 we can recommend this. Other options on the day were a pain au chocolate, almond croissant, and pistachio pain au chocolate.

And as you’re devouring your calorific croissant, why not buy some flowers! B&B’s also has a fine selection of blooms and Abraham or one of his perky Gez Z assistants can aid you in making a bouquet.

In the end Phil stared despairingly at his coffee which wasn’t a pint, and confirmed the quality to be rich, rounded, and right up there with another Observer fave, Urban Botanica around the corner. Another reason to go is the great community feeling it has, with many of your fellow Kenningtonians chatting and sipping.

Community Space, a Fine Place to Get the Job Done

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Kennington Observer

You might recall that Walworth Town Hall sadly burned down several years ago and has had hoarding over it for aeons. Well, like a Phoenix or anything else that comes out of ashes it’s been reborn as Community Space, with rooms for hire for community and charity groups. As we at the Observer have no morals when it comes to free WiFi, and we just checked out their very swishy café which is to be used by mere mortals like us.

The café look looks less like a coffee joint and more like a private members club. Mind you, we’re just speculating here as our experience of private members club extends only to Subway’s ‘Sub Club’. This part of Walworth Town Hall was purchased by Community Space in order to provide flexible office areas upstairs, aimed at non profits. We have a feeling that a condition of purchase was that they had to provide services to the community, and they offer a number of free classes, such as yoga.

In the Café we had an extremely overpriced (£4!) tea but at this price it gave us licence to sit there in quiet serenity for five hours. The coffees (espresso, latte, macchiato, the usual stuff) appeared a bit more reasonable. One half of the café is a casual restaurant offering an all day breakfast. Lunch offerings have a Japanese air and touch on everything that’s ‘on point’ at the moment, such as poke bowls and quinoa. The staff are very friendly.

Although located at the eastern fringe of Greater Kennington, if you’re looking for a quiet place to work this could be for you. It did make us wonder if this is what it’s like being in Soho House, but without City types taking a ‘toilet break’ every ten minutes and shuttling past Barry from Eastenders to get to the bar.

Collective Cakes

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Kennington Observer

The lovely building in the middle of Kennington Park is occupied by a family run pizza/cake establishment called ‘Collective’. Several years ago they decided to open a sandwich shop called ‘Sugar Pot’ in that frankly quite depressing parade of shops in front of Kennington Park It has now been replaced by a bakery and sandwich place called, fittingly, Collective Cakes.

Reassuringly, the space at Collective has turned entirely into a kitchen, with goods available to consume either on a takeaway basis or on small tables out front. Our peppy server explained that the pastry chef arrives and cooks all of the baked goods (excluding croissants) from 5am. We saw your typical complement of Victoria sponge, muffins, scones, carrot cake, coffee and walnut, and lime and ginger. There are also vegan and gluten free options.

Karen from Finance loves nothing more than a midday sweet treat to take her mind off numbers and wondering what happened to the fax machine. She had an apricot croissant, which she described as ‘of good quality and not as bouncy as those chain coffee shops’, adding that it possessed good flakiness and was a nice dark bronze, with apricot notes. Your scribe opted for one of the many savoury options and had a mozzarella, pesto and tomato sandwich. Good quality mozzarella, rich pesto, served on a kind of sourdough bread. Other sandwiches ingredients included prosciutto, stilton, and brie. They also sell homemade sourdough bread (I mean, who doesn’t).

In addition to the goodies outlined above, Collective also serves latte, cappuccino, and that old fashioned thing called coffee. Our server was keen to point out that that they also serve turmeric latte with no caffeine. We have no idea what that is but once we find that fax machine we’ll get to it.

Unique in Black Prince Road.

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Kennington Observer

We’re blessed with an abundance of independent coffee shops in Greater Kennington, and we recently paid a TKO (that’s The Kennington Observer) visit to new kid on the block ‘Unique’ in Black Prince Road. Located close to the Beaconsfield Galley, it inhabits that patch of land that calls itself Vauxhall but really isn’t.

Unique is a pleasing place to work for a few hours for those of you (not us as we’re in and underground bunker in Kennington Cross) fortunate enough to work from home a few days a week. In addition to teas and juices, they also have the traditional compliment of flat whites, Americanos, lattes, mochas and cappuchinos. And they even sell the coffee range ‘Curious Roo’. It is a quiet place to work and to listen to ambient music while chilling with middle class white people. They also serve croissants, cookies and brownies and have some bonkers art the walls.

And while we never objectify people at TKO based on looks alone, the staff are not bad to look at.

Top Ten Best Places to Eat in Greater Kennington

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Kennington Observer

+ One Sunday Roast

Best Roast – 24 The Oval

As 24 The Oval has maintained the Observer crown for Best Sunday Roast in our highly-scientific-yet-wholly-subjective top 10 Best Places to Eat Locally list for four years, in Summer 2024 we found it incumbent to pop over to see if they’re still deserving of this noble accolade.

As the office staff visited on a nice August Sunday, we chose to dine on the outside terrace. Off the bat Phil from Accounts insisted on a round of Bloody Annas, which was really just a Bloody Mary spelled differently. It was high on the lemon and spice: Delicious as such but they will adjust to your taste. To get us ready for the main event of the roasts, we shared some Belted Galloway beef croquettes, which were a hit with all: Spanish-style with their crisp outer casing and unctuous middle. When the Bloody Annas started kicking in Karen from Finance even stuck two croquettes in her mouth and said, garbling, ‘well these are just ace’. Moving on.

Next up was the first delightful idiosyncrasy of 24 The Oval: the sharing plate of mini Yorkshire puddings with pot of gravy, just to get you going. When the roasts arrived, your scribe indulged in the roast herb fed chicken breast with bread sauce. The chicken was grilled in a kind of upmarket Nando’s style and came with a roastie and salad. The second idiosyncrasy of 24 is that extra vegetables and gravy are provided French family style to share, including a cauliflower cheese made with pungent Ogleshield.

Karen opted for the lamb roast and was served as slices of leg meat plus a small confit of shoulder. Both very tasty even if we did think at first the confit was a brownie, and were presented with a homemade mint sauce. This dish was also already supplied with most of the vegetables: roast potatoes, roast mixed colour carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, a smear of spinach puree and some gravy.

Overall, this is Sunday roast prepared with care and dedication by proper chefs: Top quality ingredients, attention to detail and the delight of abundant proper, homemade Yorkshire puddings and gravy with no sight of Aunt Bessie. We found particularly exciting (we don’t have much of a life here at the Runoff) that the 24 Oval kitchen exists entirely within the restaurant. So if you’re curious about how your Yorkies are being made, or if you just like getting burned, you can inspect how your food is being made. But maybe not after three Bloody Annas.

Roasts are between £22-£26. Food of this quality doesn’t come cheap, but is excellent. But will it top our list in 2026 for a fourth crown? There is a lot of competition out there, after all.

By the way 24, if you’re reading this then you might want to ‘Glow Up’ the front of your shop as it looks rather like that branch of WH Smith in Elephant & Castle shopping centre before it closed

The Kennington Observer

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

Category Archives: cafes and restaurants