Like a pig to a truffle, you can be assured that we here at the Runoff are always sniffing out free stuff for you to do. St. Mary’s Eco Church has been created by Lambeth Palace and Southwark Diocese in response to the climate and biodiversity crisis. Once a month they organise free and mind expanding talks called the ‘Eco Chamber’ and the next one is coming up right here in our manor.
The upcoming Eco Chamber will be chaired by Radio 4’s Point of View Presenter Tommy Shakespeare and he’ll be joined Green Peer Baroness Jenny Jones and Professor Joanna Haigh. The topic will be the elimination fossil fuels and carbon emissions and questions if Net Zero initiatives will be sufficient to do this. Their talks will be followed by a group discussion and all are encouraged to ‘join is with juice, a glass of wine or a beer’. The venue is the Duchy Arms pub in Sancroft Street.
The Eco Chamber takes place on 18 April and free tickets can be obtained here. And it’s a good thing that it is being held at the Duchy Arms, as the place seems go through more management changes than the Tory party and we’re a bit concerned about their future.
Email Sharon if you have any questions: hello@stmarysecochurch.org
The number eight spot goes to the only pub in our countdown, The Jolly Gardeners in Vauxhall. The Gardeners sprang to life in 2021 and now occupies the same kitchens formerly used by a German themed pub, which we once correctly described as ‘food best enjoyed when you’re not entirely sober’. But fear not, the Gardeners boys and their sustainable and well sourced kitchen know what they’re doing. And it’s 50% vegan.
The menu at the Gardeners changes periodically, but at the time of writing (March 2023) we’ve enjoyed a cauliflower wings (a bit of a staple), lightly grilled leek with almonds, and the breaded cod filet swimming in spinach cream sauce with kale. The format in this huge pub is that it is 50% is set out as a dining room with the other half as a pub, but food can be consumed in both. The pub also features an outside dining/drinking area that rather reminds us of a ski lodge or sauna.
While it might have missed out on the top spot in terms of Sunday roasts, we can definitely recommend the Gardener roasts. As the food keeps coming it almost has an ‘all you can eat’ element to it. In the past we’ve enjoyed the silverside beef and Dorset lamb. Also keep your eagle eye out for their spicy peri peri fries and mustard green salad. On the drinks front, they work hard to source from local breweries such as Coalition or even closer ones from Brixton.
The Gardeners guys also operate a zippy little sandwich place two doors down called Simply Bread. When asked if one of the sandwich makers is none other than Mick Hucknall himself, the 20 something employee replied with a perplexed stare.
If, during lunch on Christmas Day, Aunty Faye continues to witter on about her bursitis to the extent that you start thinking about ramming a carrot into your eye socket, then we have an idea for you. Why not head to the pub! We’ve done some hunting and have tracked down the pubs (and there aren’t many) that are open on Christmas Day. And they are….
Please be aware that to the best of our knowledge these pubs are only open in the daytime. However, we’ve just received confirmation that one of our favourite pubs, theSteam Enginewill be open until midnight! It’s on the edges of Greater Kennington, in Lambeth North, but well work the walk to avoid having to get a carrot extracted from your eye.
After a long day at Runoff Towers, a gaggle of us hopped over to gastro pub The Rose in Albert Embankment to bask in their pub quiz, among other temptations. The quiz is held upstairs and MC’ed by a slightly bumbling but endearing American chap who ironically lays on some very, very tricky questions involving songs, maps, letter games and general trivia (mind bending picture round clues below). There are free drink questions and prizes to be won and on our night the jackpot was at £200. The crowd was very convivial but contained, and there wasn’t a cheating mobile in sight.
On the food front, it pains us to say that the mains had, well, spent most of their short lives in a freezer. However, some of the starters were very tasty and we can recommend the calamari. And, as if arisen from the ashes, there was a pop up menu selection from the short lived Kennington Cross burger joint Rare Burger Co. which looked more enticing. The Rose pub quiz is on Monday nights from 19:00 and can be reserved on their website. Time well spent after a day at work.
If you like a bit of stand up injected into your pub quiz, we highly recommend the quiz at The Old Red Lion pub in Kennington Park Road. Hosted by the deadpan and pseudo legendary ‘Paul Partridge Experience’, there is often a theme (music is common) and games such as throwing rings around bottles or dancing. Listen closely and he will manage to insult most celebrities, and even if ask himself existential questions such as ‘how did my life end up like this’. The Old Red Lion pub quiz is on Sunday nights from 20:00 and can be reserved on their website.
Paul Partridge, Quiz supremo.
And if you’re wondering if team Runoff won the pub quiz then let me be the first to tell you that we didn’t. That honour was bestowed on the young men with great hair who scored our quiz sheet, who then eagerly informed us that they live in north London and are great friends from Uni. We resisted the urge to say ‘oh yeah, well we all work at an imaginary publishing house so TAKE THAT’ and throw our crumpled quiz sheet at them.
On its opening night we paid a clandestine visit to Elephant Square’s newest baby, The Rosy Hue pub. The Hue is the seventh offering of independent chain Livelyhood, all being based in south London. The pub is modern and airy, in the ‘exposed ducts and wires’ manner that’s all the rage at the moment. The eating side is divided by the pub side by a useful screen. And the place is so deliciously on trend that they even brag about their MISMATCHED and RECLAIMED cutlery! And they even show you just where in south London their beers and spirits come from ON A MAP!
The draught beers and ciders on offer are diverse and all come in at around £6, which seems surreally normal nowadays. The usual complement of spirits line the bar and wine list not too damaging on the pocket, and we had a Spanish white. The menu is short but interesting, featuring veg and vegan options. For starters, we enjoyed brisket croquettes (£8) and were presented with five two-bite croquettes that had a lovely smooth and soft Spanish quality to them with a meaty brisket twist.
For the mains, your scribe had a crab & haddock fishcake (£15.5) which was thickly breaded and very generous with the meat. A well poached egg mounted the cake. The real zinger came with the sauce, which was lobster and champagne. Fancy! Karen from finance had the bavette steak (£18.50) which was cooked perfectly rare as requested, sliced and served with a chimichurri sauce with pomegranate. That added sweetness was unexpected but worked. Rosemary fries alongside were crisp and plentiful. Any more details escaped Karen as she’d had too much Spanish white.
As for the vibe, as we went the night the Queen died we couldn’t actually describe it as ‘zany and upbeat’, but it certainly tried. The crowd was predominantly white 30 somethings with nice teeth who probably reside in those new Elephant flats with geographically bizarre names such as ‘Central Park West’. But those who do not fit that demographic (like us) are welcome. There were also a curious number of dogs.
The service staff at the Hue were surprisingly knowledgeable about the joint considering they’d only worked there for about five minutes, but be warned. The place also has huge, looming TV screens. So you’re forever at risk of the horrifying spectacle of, in the middle of your burger, the screens switching over to Sky Sports. But those looming screens will also be showing the Queen’s funeral on Monday morning which sounds a bit morbid. We’ll be there.
If you’ve ever strolled through Vauxhall you’ve certainly walked past Casa Madeira multiple times. Madeira is the restaurant in a quartet of Portuguese establishments in Albert Embankment and is flanked by a cafe, supermarket and further down by a further bar/café called ‘Pico’. Outside you can usually find clusters of folk drinking Sagres under umbrellas and chatting in Portuguese, which makes you feel as if you’ve just stumbled across a delightful bar in Lisbon as opposed to a railway arch in Vauxhall next to a petrol station.
We chose to sit outside on what was a balmy, lovely evening and without a reservation, which was fine. The space was large and well set up, with some high octane background muzak and screens and plants which provided helpful sensory deprivation from the road and aforementioned petrol station. The service staff were friendly, efficient and drilled to near perfection about the food on offer — with our waiter’s specific knowledge of the fish market in Funchal leaving just this side of aroused. We therefore started our journey with deep fried whitebait which were nicely plump, breaded, and plentiful. Served with lemon and tartare sauce, their little silvery tails popping out to remind us of the goodness inside.
Portuguese mains are more or less variations on a theme, and this is the case at Madeira. We saw whizzing across the pavement chorizo, lamb cutlets, and chicken escalopes. However, we came here for the fish and seafood and to satisfy you, dear reader, we splashed out on the fish grill for two. This huge dish consisted of two chargrilled pieces of seabass, blackened salmon, black scabbard fish, and this was topped by two enormous butterflied king prawns and a scattering of calamari rings. All soaking in olive oil with sides of carrot, beans and new potato. Delicious and grilled by a person who knew what they were doing. This was perfectly matched with a Portuguese white (wines start at £26)
Prices at Madeira are reasonable, and at times remarkable, based on what they are serving and given the joint’s proximity to the West End. We paid £41 for the seafood but you can blow the bank on turbot for two (£75) or just pop in for a pint and pastal de nada (£1.50). We recommend the fish and seafood and also the meats on offer. Pizza and burgers also make an appearance for some surreal reason but if the spirit takes you there then go for it. And if you’re wondering just what the hell scabbard fish is, lets just say that it resembles one of those deep sea creatures that washes up on beaches every few years that people assumed was extinct.
It’s almost as if our friends over at Vauxhall City Farm have read our Runoff minds as they have managed to roll three of our most cherished concepts into a single destination. These are, in no particular order, 1. Charitable causes 2. Farmyard animals 3. Cocktails.
Set inside and out of their buzzy café, we recently visited the Farm’s newish pop up bar ‘Faiths Place’ on a sweltering early evening (and to the Runoff mandarins this WAS a work event). Faith’s Place is open Thursday – Sunday from 5 – 11 and during our visit had a clientele of after work people peppered with a few families who were a bit befuddled that their kiddie café had been transformed into a bar. The beers on offer were four different offerings from Brixton Brewery and a further four from Gipsy Hill Brewery, all served in cans. Also on offer were four different reds and four whites. On the spirits front we’re afraid its only gin and tonics, but they had some good looking gins and that posh Fever Tree tonic. All were very reasonably priced.
On the nibbles front, we encountered a range of sandwiches and some very inventive sounding crisps. We enjoyed Adnams citrus beer flavoured crisps, but for the more conventional souls there are staples such as cheese and onion. We were unsure about the ethics of eating a hoisin duck sandwich when there were actual ducks only a few feet away so we didn’t go down that road. But, while you’re in the place knocking a few back, there’s no ethical quandary in buying something from the impressive line of City Farm related merch on offer.
We recently paid a visit to Greater Kennington’s (Walworth) own local brewery ‘Orbit’ on a hot sunny day to inspect their Sunday roast offerings. The roast and indeed all the food on offer at Orbit are provided by the chefs of ‘Lightnin Hot Things’ (below) who run a very experimental kitchen in one corner of the brewery. It’s actually quite remarkable that they produce such a range of food in such a proscribed space. We sampled some of their other offerings a few months ago and you can read about them and the beers here.
There were four of us on our visit but it was almost three, as Doug from IT was pretty sure the guy in the middle of this photo was the same person who mugged him in Soho in 2018. When we convinced him that this was pretty unlikely we had enough people to enjoy a variety of the roasts on offer. Our booked table was initially outside, but when we pointed out that we’d rather not end our meal resembling their acclaimed pickled beetroot, the chipper barman moved us indoors and with its makeshift plywood seating created a distinct elbows on tables experience.
Doug opted for the lamb shoulder which was generous, soft, flavourful and dolloped with mint sauce. All roasts come with an enormous Yorkshire pudding, and owing to its juicy and crispy quality it hadn’t been anywhere near Aunt Bessie. Other sides were great too – its always good to see Savoy cabbage, tasty roast carrots too and caramelised onions on a plate. And the confit garlic was a nice surprise touch.
Chicken
Beef
Lamb
Your scribe indulged in the herb fed chicken topped with two chunks of chicken crackling. The chicken was moist and bountiful- just about cooked perfectly. From the gravy I received a distinct hit of rosemary and garlic, and given its meaty and flavourful nature obviously owed none of its heritage to Bisto and a kettle. The sides were the same as Doug’s with the addition of what seemed like a very nutty butter puree. Another of our party had the rump of beef roast, which had obviously been slow cooked and melted in the mouth. Overall these were well worth the £18.50 price.
If you don’t fancy the Sunday roasts, the Lightnin’ Hot Things boys offer up some pretty avant garde fair during the week such as octopus salad and curried coconut. We’ve commented on the beers in previous posts, but as its summer the current favourite at the moment is, hang on……tzatziki flavoured beer. We tried some and it had zesty, cucumber notes and it rather reminded us of cider. With this observation the chipper barman became slightly less chipper, saying ‘no, this is not cider’.
Suffer as we do for our readers, we just checked out Elephant and Castle’s very first cocktail bar, Cherry Tiger, which opened last week. It’s perched at the top of Elephant Square, incongruously set amongst shops selling wigs, figure shaping garments and costume jewellery. The location affords nice views towards our newly created little patch of green, Elephant Park.
James on the left, 75 on the right
Cherry Tiger is owned by the highly regarded and ‘oh my god does that pint really cost 9 quid’ Vauxhall taproom Mother Kellys, so it comes with a fine pedigree. Having said that, most of the cocktails at CT come in at £8 here, which is pretty reasonable for London. Julie from our accounts team likes a nice cocktail, and she had the ‘French 75’ with gin and sparkling wine. It was semi dry, zesty and lemony. Your scribe had the very sweet ‘James Brown’ featuring bourbon, amaretto and sugar. In addition to the inventive drinks below, CT can also mix up more traditional cocktails and also have a beer and wine list.
As you can see, the design aesthetic of Cherry Tiger is a kind of mashup of fancy wallpaper meets weekend project following a B&Q visit. The highly energetic staff explained that it is still early days at CT, and the look will change over the next few weeks. While it might not be an evening destination per se, Cherry Tiger is a fine way to either start or finish your evening. But if you do spend your whole evening there, if the stairs prove too daunting there is a lift.
As the long weekend beckons we thought we would tell you about our recent visit our very own local microbrewery Orbit, located in a pocket of Walworth in the very precipice of the Greater Kennington catchment area. If you’re a dedicated KR fan (and if not you’re missing out) you’ll remember that we visited the place last September but rather slammed them on the food front. We wanted to give them a shot at redemption, plus getting us into a brewery isn’t exactly a chore for us.
Orbit is primarily about beers, and your scribe started with the Belgian pale ale ‘Peel’. It was a very hoppy offering with notes of pepper/clove, and also bits of citrus and lime. I still swear that at the end I got a hit of Colgate Total, but my unfeeling colleagues only laughed and questioned when I last brushed. Unfeeling colleague one started with a limited edition Cuvée de Cologne, served as a 2/3 pint size. It’s their Koln lager but given an extra twist that, for said colleague, gave it a Belgian lambic taste. Delicious. Equally distinctive was the Dead Wax London Porter, had by the other colleague, one of their core pint offerings, rich and dark as a Porter should be with a chocolate caramel character. What they seem to be doing at Orbit is to experiment and make their offerings as diverse as possible. And in case you were wondering, they do serve tadzitki flavoured beer.
On the food front, we were keen to improve on their Challah bap ‘adventure’ of a few months ago and we weren’t disappointed. We indulged in a king size plate of fried pork belly with negroni rhubarb and confit fennel. It was a great and bold mix of punchy flavours with the pork more or less melting even before it hit our tongues. Also looking good was ox cheek lasagne and Cretan bread salad. When your scribe asked where he gets his inspiration he said ‘I just make it up’….Respect! They also have a rather exciting looking Sunday roast which we are keeping our KR eyes attuned to.
If you live in Walworth you’ve probably seen Orbit beers popping up in places like the retro video game pub Four Quarters and in Littlle Louis, the only bar/restaurant where you can actually buy the furniture. And if you’re still staying safe at home, of if people just don’t like going out with you, as Orbit is a brewery you can buy all the beer you want to take away and mixed up some cases for home consumption.
