Following the huge excitement around our Top Ten Best Restaurants in Kennington list, this Sunday will see the start of our Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington. This is for all those establishments that don’t generally open in the evenings, from Sally White to the Imperial War Museum cafe. Suggestions welcome.
Sirena’s
A good rule of thumb for pop-up dining experiences – the longer a pop-up runs, the more likely it is to be a professional outfit. We will never forget a visit to a very short-lived pop-up in Bethnal Green that involved drinking Aldi own-brand lemonade from water cooler cups while waiting for our undercooked stew to arrive. Po’ Boys, a journey through New Orleans cuisine set in a hidden steelyard in West Kennington, is running until September, and it shows. The venue – The Yard on Durham Street – has hosted a handful of food events since it opened last year, and while it’s no Creole townhouse, it felt a long way from the fringes of the West Kennington gyratory on a balmy Friday night.
Draped with Mardi Gras beads on entrance through a small speak-easy style door, guests are offered a potent New Orleans Hurricane cocktail in the cobbled hackers yard. Dining is at communal tables – Sathnam Sanghera was sat on ours; perhaps you’ll find Will Self trying another local dining option after his saddening time at Dirty Burger?
When the food came, it was tasty without exception – Jalapeño Poppers pegged up on a steel washing line (above), sticky sweet Dr Pepper-doused ribs, tiny mason jars filled with pickled crawfish, an authentic-tasting gumbo (below), and a very heady Mississippi Mud Pie (further below). All to a soundtrack that stretched from the Kygo remix of Sexual Healing through to Bayou anthem Proud Mary.
Tickets for a few of the dates are already sold out, but there are still plenty left with good availability.
Dates: Friday nights, Saturday nights & Sunday lunches on selected dates to 27th September. Cost: £35 for five courses plus cocktail.
Address: The Yard, 4 Durham Street, SE11 5JA.
There are three Buddhist Centres in Kennington (see also the Kagyu Samye Dzong Tibetan Buddhist Centre and the Diamond Way Buddhist Centre in the former Beaufoy Institute), but only one of them is worth visiting if you have no interest in Buddhism, yoga or meditation – that’s Jamyang, for its excellent Courtyard Café.
All the food is vegetarian, much of it is vegan, and it’s delicious. They always have a selection of salads and cakes as you can see above. Their quiche is our favourite main but they’d run out last time we visited so we had bulghur wheat served with spinach, caper and artichoke for £4.80, or £6.80 with salads:
Most of their products are organic, and they serve local sourdough bread from the Kennington Bakery.
The building is an old courthouse dating from 1869, in its later days used as a maximum security court for special remands, including IRA terrorists, the Kray twins, and members of the gang who seized the Iranian Embassy. Despite that, when the sun is shining, Kennington has nowhere more peaceful to eat your lunch than the Jamyang courtyard:
and certainly nowhere else with a giant gold statue of Buddha surrounded by plants:
Glastonbury Festival are increasingly looking to Kennington for inspiration when booking their acts. When the Foo Fighters pulled out as headliner, they booked Florence & The Machine, clearly remembering the time Florence Welch stepped up to the plate at short notice at South London Pacific. Likewise, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama “played” Glastonbury this year, but he appeared at Jamyang way back in 1999, when he blessed and inaugurated a new shrine.
Jamyang’s cafe is open Monday-Friday 10am-4pm (we wish they’d open on the weekend too). They have free wi-fi and takeaway available. Get there early for the quiche.
Address: Jamyang Buddhist Centre, The Old Courthouse, 43 Renfrew Road, London, SE11 4NA.
Since our last visit to The Three Stags, they have converted their upstairs room into an open kitchen dining room with wood fired pizza oven:
The pizza was delicious – the best we’ve had in Kennington. They only do one size – twelve inches – and they make their own dough which is proved for two days “resulting in the most delicious light easy to digest base”. We had buffalo mozzarella and tomato which tasted wonderfully fresh although not cheap at £14.50:
There’s table service and the staff were particularly friendly and helpful. They’ve gone to a bit of trouble with the decor as well, with London-themed wallpaper by Timorous Beasties:
As befits a pub so close to the Imperial War Museum, they have war memorabilia around their stairs:
They serve food Monday to Friday 12- 4 and 6 -10, Saturday 12-5 and 6 – 10, Sunday 12-4 and 6-9 and they’re open till midnight except on Sundays (11pm). It’s a good summer pub thanks to all their outside seating, big windows upstairs and the adjacent Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park.
Here’s our original piece about The Three Stags if you’d like to learn more about their environmental credentials, their beekeeping or their Charlie Chaplin links.
Mamuśka slipped out of our top ten this year as we have had occasional stodgy dishes there, but those dishes may well have been authentically Polish, and if you’ve never been, you really should go for the experience and the atmosphere.
Emanuel also has a great atmosphere and feels authentically Peruvian – maybe a a bit too authentic at times.
We’re reasonably regular visitors to Amici, at the junction of Windmill Row and Kennington Lane, which is a decent, friendly Italian. They have outdoor seating in the courtyard which is great when the weather’s good. To us Amici represents the old Kennington where the likes of the Duchy Arms, Brunswick House and Doost (from the same owners as Amici) represent the new, but long may it last.
We have a soft spot for Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec and we’re grateful there is live music (mostly jazz) in Kennington every night, but we’re bigger fans of their brunch than their bistro evening menu.
The food at Kennington Tandoori is a cut above your average curry house, and probably marginally better than Gandhi’s (who are also very good and do a great value vegetable thali). KT have nice bright premises with a front that opens onto the street – pleasant in the summer months. But we’ve talked before about their “customer is always wrong” attitude. We had another run in with them this year where we complained, they rather aggressively told us we were wrong, so we provided proof to back up our complaint, which was met with silence. We don’t want to give any more details for fear of being banned. And it’s not just us – see their Tripadvisor page for some real pearls.
Anyway, we’d love to see all these restaurants burst into the top ten next year, and would welcome suggestions of any we’ve missed.
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker? Kennington has them all, and now we have a baker of organic sourdough breads as well – Kennington Bakery.
John will bake your choice of loaf to order then leave it for collection in the afternoons from various locations around Kennington. They’re also stocked by Italo Deli, Sally White and the Kennington Coffee Shop.
His full range of breads is here, and will expand over time. As you can tell from his descriptions, John really knows his bread, and if you can describe it, the chances are he’ll be able to bake it for you flawlessly.
Our favourites so far are the Saratoga, a “San Francisco-style” sourdough:
The Agincourt, “An open crumb white loaf similar to a French Pain au Levain. But better.”:
The Blenheim is great too for fans of caraway, and for those avoiding wheat, some of his breads are 100% rye.
John is primarily a baker of bread but he also did some mean hot cross buns earlier in the year:
Oh, and we like their flier, clearly inspired by Peter Saville’s work for Factory Records:
This morning (Saturday) you can meet John and sample his wears on a stall outside Sally White. This was his stall at the Kennington Village Fete:
Positives: It’s the one Kennington restaurant we want to go back to time and time again. It always feels like a treat, partly because of the crazy (and crazily expensive) reclaimed goods and antiques all around, but also because the cooking is so creative and the ingredients are so fresh.
Salsify, cauliflower and olive at Brunswick House – kenningtonrunoff.com
Negatives: Not withstanding the presence of Aesop hand-wash, the toilets belong in an architectural reclaim shop rather than a high end restaurant. (Brunswick House’s Jackson Boxer informs us the toilets have recently been refurbished.) It’s not cheap, but they do an express menu at lunchtime and from 6-7pm which is £16 for two courses or £19 for three. We have a lingering fear that an antique chandelier is going to fall onto our heads. But it’s worth it.
Address: Brunswick House, 30 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2LG
Positives: Some of the best pub food around, cooked by Prince Charles’s former chef. Great, hand cut chips. Get in quick before the hordes discover it.
Negatives: If you’re looking for a light bite, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is their fish pie for two:
Hygiene rating: TBC
Address: 63 Sancroft Street, London SE11 5UG
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 1.
Positives: Everyone should go to The Lobster Pot at least once. The lobster is sensational, and so is the nautical-themed decor:
Negatives: Last year’s winner has slipped to no. 3 this year because it’s not the kind of restaurants we feel drawn to time and time again – it’s pricey (mains start at £20.50), and you do have to be in the right mood. Also, the use of inverted commas in this advert:
Address: 3 Kennington Lane, London SE11 4RG
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 2.
Update: i’klectik remains open as an arts and events space with a bar serving drinks and snacks, but they no longer serve meals from the kitchen
At the centre of Old Paradise Yard is i’klectik, an “art lab” and cafe that hosts everything from free jazz to life drawing to visual art shows to DJs, along with tasty vegetarian food. They have a friendly vibe, and a great building, so forgive them their cringeworthy name and get along there.
We went along for the weekend veggie brunch, served from 11am-4pm, accompanied by a DJ playing funk classics:
The menu is short but good, and there are plenty of snacks, teas and beers to choose from, as you can see here:
This is their root veggie, millet and seeds burger with roasted sweet potatoes and coleslaw. Yes, we got overexcited again and started eating before taking the photo:
It wasn’t on the menu when we visited but this veggie rainbow tart they posted on Twitter looks amazing:
It’s a nice bright space with high ceilings, and a diverse clientele:
Some of the food is grown on site and you can taste the freshness:
They’re open Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm and Saturday and Sunday 10am to 6pm, unless there’s an event on, in which case they stay open until 10.30pm.
Their website is not up to date so head to their Twitter or Facebook for more info.
Old Paradise Yard is at 20 Carlisle Lane, SE1 7LG, on the north side of Archibishop’s Park, yards from St Thomas’s Hospital.
