The Tunnel Of Love

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Kennington Observer

Valentine’s Day: a purely commercial construct designed to entice otherwise sensible individuals to shell out on teddies and red foil balloons, yes, but when have we ever been ones to kill a romantic notion?

If you’ve still not made a grand gesture, Sally White may have some of their Jammy Dodger love hearts left:

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(photo credit @WHITECAFESally)

You’ve left it too late to go to the West Kennington Village’s cinema pop-up The Tunnel of Love tonight (all sold out I’m afraid), but you can still get tickets for Moonrise Kingdom and Lost In Translation tomorrow, screened in a disused railway arch by Vauxhall Station. They’ve laid on a champagne cocktail bar, Rococo chocolates stand and a flower stall so that you can lay it on thick with your date in the hope that they won’t moan too much about celebrating Valentine’s Day a little later than expected.

(Tunnel of Love photo credit @vickybattcock)

If that leaves you feeling a bit icky, head next door to Fire, and blast yourself to Oblivion at their Vagabondz Valentine’s Party.

Adulis Eritrean Restaurant and Bar

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Kennington Observer

There are a surprising number of Eritrean restaurants in London. Adulis is one of the longest established, having been in South Kennington since 1996, and probably the best (also check out Kifto House, just outside the borders of West Kennington on South Lambeth Road).

Eritean food is really tasty and fun. It’s all about the injera – leavened pancakes made with sourdough of teff flour, which is a grain grown in Ethiopia and Eritrea that’s gluten free and nutritious. Your food will come served on a giant injera, and you’ll get a separate bowl of rolled up injera which you’ll use instead of cutlery to scoop up the food. Order the vegetable or meat platter, or a mix of the two, and you’ll get a variety of delicious stews, including goat and boiled egg. It makes for an unusual and enjoyable communal eating experience that’s great for parties – the atmosphere in Adulis is always good. The only snag is it’s arguably the world’s least photogenic cuisine:

Eritrea does have one brand of beer – it’s called Gold Star – but in South Kennington you will have to settle for Tusker Lager which is from Kenya and annoyingly owned by Diageo:

After dinner comes the coffee ceremony, which begins with heavily roasted coffee beans being waved in front of you so you can absorb the aroma. These will then be ground, placed in a traditional clay vessel, boiled several times, and served with popcorn, accompanied by the smell of burning frankincense.

After the coffee ceremony comes hour after hour of caffeine-induced mania (that must be what the early morning clubbers of West Kennington have been drinking).

Italo Deli

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Kennington Observer

The final stop on our tour of Bonnington Square is one of West Kennington’s finest and most important shops. It was a Turkish shopkeeper whose legal action saved Bonnington Square from demolition in the late 1970s. Since 2008, those same shop premises have been occupied by Italo Deli which has also had a big part to play in the flourishing of Bonnington Square.

The deli is run by Luigi di Lieto, formerly of Di Lieto’s bakery and shop, and Charlie Boxer. Charlie is the son of food writer Arabella and father of Jackson (Brunswick House Café) and Frank (Frank’s Campari Bar in Peckham). Just don’t mention the errant son who’s the fruit and veg buyer for Tesco.

If you shop at Borough Market or Whole Foods, you will recognise some of Italo Deli’s products but hopefully not the prices – Charlie told The Independent “I have a very strong dislike of expensive food shops and that whole Borough Market thing – the effect where quality translates into high prices and exclusivity. People can feel excluded from the food revolution going on.”

Kennington Runoff’s favourite beer is Kernel, brewed at one of the first London craft breweries in nearby Bermondsey. We’re a little obsessed with it, especially the Amarillo Pale Ale. Italo Deli is the Kennington area’s only stockist of Kernel (although Greensmith’s on nearby Lower Marsh also have it).

Italo also sell a good range of fresh seasonal vegetables, some grown by residents of the square.

Some, but not all, of what they sell is Italian, including homemade fresh ravioli, and they do hot food at lunchtimes.

Tommy Adams and Jamie Berger, the founders of Pitt Cue Co, met at Bonnington Café then worked together at Italo Deli, and Chantal Coady, founder of Rococo Chocolates, is a big fan (and long-time Bonnington resident).

The place is beautiful, like an old village shop, which makes the abysmal aesthetics of their website all the more surprising. Their Twitter feed is pretty good though, and they like the Flying Burrito Brothers so they’re alright by us.

Bonnington Cafe

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Kennington Observer

Bonnington Cafe has been a mainstay of Bonnington Square since the squatters moved in in the early 1980s. At that time, many of the houses didn’t have functioning kitchens, so members of the community took turns to cook for each other in the communal cafe, using ingredients either bought from or scavenged from the nearby Covent Garden food market.

The cafe still operates in this way, run as a co-operative, with a different chef cooking every day, but it’s now open the wider public as well, and it’s a truly magical place to spend an evening. Needless to say, the food can be a little hit and miss depending who’s cooking, and there are generally just two choices of starter, main course, and dessert, all vegetarian and some vegan. But the food is cheap, it’s BYOB with no corkage charge, and the atmosphere is invariably great, with candles, occasional live music, a wood fire on cold nights, and above all, a real sense of community (the cafe doubles as a community centre). Just don’t ask for the “special stuff”.

Here’s a video about the Bonnington Square squatters, including plenty about the cafe (thanks to @taxbod for the link):

Kennington predictions for 2014

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Kennington Observer

An exciting year for North West Kennington with the opening of Damien Hirst’s gallery and the new Buddhist centre in the Beaufoy Institute.

Sally White will dramatically expand their range of food, open in the evenings, and provide mindfulness training for all staff.

Kernel Brewery will open their first pub in the site next to the Old Red Lion.

Waitrose will take over Tesco’s Kennington “superstore”, The People’s Supermarket will take over Tesco on Kennington Park Road, The Super Store on Kennington Lane will take over Tesco on Kennington Road, and no new Tescos will open anywhere in Kennington.

Ace Hotel will open their second London hotel in the former Days Inn on Kennington Road.

The Imperial War Museum will reopen with catering from Ottolenghi.

Lambeth Palace will open to visitors all year round.

Russell Brand will perform at Always Be Comedy.

Dirty Burger will introduce a veggie burger.

The revitalisation of North Kennington will continue with the Elephant & Castle shopping centre being listed, a Curzon cinema replacing the bingo hall, and a bunch of exciting new bars and restaurants moving in on the Brixton Village model (thanks to Oliver Dee for the suggestions).

Florence Welch will launch her guest column for Kennington Runoff by performing Addicted To Love at the Kennington Runoff pop up shop.

The heroic Mr Kennington People On Bikes will be named London’s new Cycling Superczar. His first action in this new role will be to implement fully segregated cycle lanes (with a physical barrier between car and bike) along all Kennington’s main arteries, which then spread out to Hyde Park, the City and beyond. By summer 2014. If they can build a cable car across the Thames in less than a year, then this is but a moment’s work.

LASSCO will realise the decimal point has been in the wrong place all this time and will start selling their beautiful items for one hundredth of the price.

Mimi’s Italian Deli

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Kennington Observer

Stuck for a Christmas present for that special food lover in your life? Get along to Bon Vivant Boulevard (AKA Brixton Road) and assemble a hamper from all the delights that are on offer.

South Kennington institution Mimi’s Deli is a good place to start. It’s a family-run deli and cafe selling Italian foods and wines, many of which would otherwise be hard to find in London.

Meats and cheeses:

Italian wines, starting at £7.50 per bottle:

If in doubt, there’s always Panettone:

They open till 7pm every day except Sundays when they close at 3pm. Still not sure? Let inspiring testimonials from the likes of Joanna Lumley, Kevin Spacey and Will Self convince you.

Malinka Continental Delicatessen

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Kennington Observer

We need to think of a name for the northern stretch of Brixton Road to reflect all its foodie delights. Bon Vivant Boulevard? Gourmet Ghetto?

Anyway, Malinka Continental Delicatessen has been at 58 Brixton Road for at least six years but people are still discovering it. From the outside you could mistake it for a standard Polish delicatessen, and the aesthetic of the cafe area is rather utilitarian, but they make up for it with a great range of products – some Polish but mostly not – and a five star hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency (we are sticklers for hygiene).

Teapigs tea – hurray:

Cheeses:

They also do sandwiches, lasagne, pierogi and such like, and they have a comically bad website which claims they are closed on the weekends but we think this is wrong.

Malinka is a village in Northern Poland and has several meanings in Polish: raspberry, or love bite, or person who is prepared to pay wildly over the odds for nicely branded tea. Yes, we’re a pair of malinkas here at Kennington Runoff.

Cable Bar & Café

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Kennington Observer

The South Kennington end of Brixton Road in is becoming a haven for food and drink lovers. There’s the Oval Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, plus some very good delis and restaurants which we’ll write about soon. Best of all for hot drinks and extended visits is Cable Bar & Café, from the people behind the Scootercaffe on Lower Marsh in Waterloo – a cafe so cool it wouldn’t be out of place on Redchurch Street or in The Marais in Paris.

Cable, which used to be a greasy spoon, has a similar aesthetic to the Scootercaffe, which used to sell scooters, with vintage furniture, exposed brickwork, a poster for North by Northwest, a playlist featuring Edith Piaf, Françoise Hardy and the Velvet Underground, and live music on Tuesdays (jazz, bop, bluegrass – that kind of thing). Bands playing the nearby Brixton Academy gravitate here after soundcheck, so if you see someone who looks like they’re in Gogol Bordello or Lamb of God, they probably are.

Their coffee is top notch and food-wise they offer a selection of sausage rolls, scotch eggs and cakes. The Evening Standard have been breathlessly promoting West Kennington for some time now, which stretched to this South Kennington spot not long after it opened.

They also have a piano:

Cable Bar & Café

8 Brixton Rd, London SW9 6BU
020 8617 9629

The Electric Elephant Cafe and Gallery

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

If you’re heading to the Pullens Yard Open Studios this weekend, you will most likely drop in on East Kennington’s kookiest cafe and gallery, the Electric Elephant, which is on the Walworth Road end of Pullens Yard. The homemade ice cream is particularly eccentric.

This is the place to pick up local history books and pamphlets. Nine Things That Aren’t There must be about local archaic and largely forgotten place names such as Walworth, Elephant & Castle, Lambeth, Vauxhall and Oval:

Emanuel Peruvian restaurant

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Big things are happening with Peruvian cuisine in London – Soho’s Ceviche now has its own cookbook, and Fitzrovia’s very fine Lima restaurant was recently awarded a Michelin star. But fear not – North Kennington, AKA London’s Latin American Quarter, has its own Peruvian restaurant, Emanuel on Amelia Street (in fact it has more than one, but that is for another day). We’ve never been to Peru but based on dining experiences elsewhere in Latin America, we suspect Emanuel is a lot closer to what you’ll find in Peru than Lima is. It’s not much to look at inside or out, but go there for the food and the atmosphere. We went on a Sunday lunchtime when the kitchen is open until 3pm, and it was packed with Latin Americans, including one birthday party.

While you’re waiting for your food – and it could be a while if they’re busy – they will bring you toasted chulpe corn, AKA cancha salada, Peru’s all-time favourite snack, which is like crunchier popcorn:

Ceviche (pretty different to what you’ll get in the Soho Ceviche):

Paella (pescatarians will do fine at Emanuel; vegetarians less well):

And to drink, how about an Inca Kola, a Peruvian national icon containing lemon verbena, or Cristal, a Peruvian lager (not to to be confused with the Chilean or Cuban beers of the same name):

Actually, before you order the Kola, check the nutritional advice:

The Kennington Observer

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

Category Archives: cafes and restaurants

The Tunnel Of Love

Adulis Eritrean Restaurant and Bar

Italo Deli

Bonnington Cafe

Kennington predictions for 2014

Mimi’s Italian Deli

Malinka Continental Delicatessen

Cable Bar & Café

The Electric Elephant Cafe and Gallery

Emanuel Peruvian restaurant