We have been critical of The Dog House under its new management so we thought we should point out one thing they’ve got magnificently right for summer: hay bales! The hay bales have disappeared since we wrote this post. Ho hum.
Category Archives: pubs and bars
Beefeater Gin Distillery
Kennington is the Home of Gin – Burnett’s White Satin gin was made in West Kennington from 1750 onwards, and London’s last surviving gin distillery, Beefeater, has been located on Montford Place since 1958 when it left Chelsea in a bid to move upmarket.
As part of their ongoing commitment to Kennington, Beefeater recently opened a visitors’ centre, so naturally we went along for a tour.
The museum part of the tour has plenty about the dark history of gin in London, when it was known as mother’s ruin.
Here are some different eras of Beefeater bottles:
Only four people know the recipe for the Beefeater blend – the master brewer Desmond and his three stillmen, Keith, Maxim and Leeroy. They all have to have their noses insured and under no circumstances are they allowed to visit Walworth. The visitors centre are happy to tell you the flavourings anyway, and let you sniff them: Seville orange peel, lemon peel, bitter almond, liquorice, orris root, angelica seed, angelica root, coriander, and of course juniper:
Then you step through into the distillery itself:
Beefeater are aiming to make 36 million bottles this year, all of it distilled here, although then they transport the highly alcoholic distilled liquid to Scotland to mix it with water there.
Naturally the tour begins and ends in the gift shop, which plays heavily on the patriotism:
They have a new brew called London Garden which is inspired by the flower garden in Kennington Park, and is only available from the distillery.
The visitors centre is open every day except Christmas Day, and costs £12 for adults, £10.80 for concessions, and is free for under 18s, although they miss out on the free gin and tonic at the end. From mother’s ruin to kid’s day out.
Kernel beer now available at your place
We love Kernel beer. It has only been around since 2009 but it has pretty much revolutionised London’s brewing scene in that time, inspiring other new breweries along the way. They mostly make pale ale, using different hops each week. And the beautifully designed label on each bottle names the hops contained within. So Kernel geeks like us end up buying the beer all year round just to find out how the Centennial hop tastes when combined with the Amarillo – very good by the way.
Check out their domination of Ratebeer’s list of the best beers brewed in England. You haven’t tried pale ale until you’ve tried Kernel.
Until recently, the only place you could buy Kernel in Kennington was Italo Deli, but now Hubbub (another of our favourite companies) have added Kernel as one of their shops. Hubbub is a food and drink delivery service like Ocado, but instead of getting all their products from supermarket warehouses, they get them from your local shops. So you can get your Kernel straight from the brewery in the same delivery as some cavolo nero from Ted’s Veg in Borough Market, some comté from Franklin’s Farm Shop in Dulwich, and some general smugness from L’Emporio Fine Foods.
Or, if you a fancy a Saturday morning excursion out of Kennington, you can visit the Kernel Brewery under a railway arch in nearby Bermondsey every Saturday from 9am to 2pm, and sample their latest brews on bierkeller-style seating. Grab a waffle from Waffle On at Maltby Street Market on your way home.
n.b. We have not been compensated for this post but we would like it to be known that we would basically do anything for a crate of Kernel – even be nice about Clapham.
Zeitgeist at the Jolly Gardeners – the only place to watch the World Cup Final
If you’re going to be in London rather than Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, there’s only one place to watch the World Cup Final – London’s premier German gastropub, Zeitgeist in North West Kennington.
Zeitgeist is located at The Jolly Gardeners pub on Black Prince Road, which has 120 years of history as a pub. In common with every Kennington pub of a certain age, Charlie Chaplin’s dad used to drink there, and scenes from the films Snatch and The Calcium Kid were shot there. Since Zeitgeist moved in, the colour theme is black, inside and out – not so jolly anymore. But the schnitzel, schweinebraten, leberkaes, and German beers like Weihenstephaner and Krombacher will soon cheer you up.
They will be showing the World Cup Final on their 4 x 3 metre screen and their 60″ TV. Pay £10 in advance and you will get guaranteed entry, a shot of Vodka Brause and a Currywurst/Bratwurst roll. More info from their black website.
North Lambeth L&R Club
We’d always assumed this place, in between houses on Kennington Road, was derelict. Then a BT Sport banner appeared outside:
Soon followed by an advert for an event:
Now we have so many questions.
What’s it like inside?
When does it open? It never looks open.
Can anyone go, or do you have to be a member?
What does L&R stand for?
Is it on brand for Kennington Runoff? (Do they serve Kernel beer?) We fear not, but as you may have guessed, we’re running out of places to write about that are.
Hula Boogie Bunnyhoppin’ at South London Pacific Tiki Bar
If, as evening draws in on Easter Sunday, you’ve dropped a couple too many of Sally White’s Speckled Praline Quail Eggs and you’re looking for some vigorous physical exercise within staggering distance, let Hula Boogie come to your rescue. The award-winning 1950s-obsessed night will be celebrating Easter at the South London Pacific Tiki Bar with a Bunnyhoppin’ vintage dance on Sunday 20th April, where they hope to form the longest bunny hop line ever. Oh, and there’s also an Easter egg hunt in case you haven’t yet over-indulged.
Club founder Miss Aloha will be on hand at 7.30pm to lead a 1950s jive/rock ‘n’ roll taster class, followed by a class in the exotic Hawaiian hula dance, the Hukilau, at 8pm.
Free Easter eggs and £1 off the entrance fee for those who attend wearing bunny ears (entry without bunny ears is £7). Or FREE ENTRY for one lucky Kennington Runoff reader and their friend with our exciting competition. To win two guestlist places just tell us which Kennington musical celebrity performed onstage last year at the South London Pacific:
a) Morrissey
b) Florence Welch
c) Chilli from Palma Violets.
Send the correct answer via email to kenningtonrunoff@gmail.com by midday on Good Friday, please.
Hula Boogie is held at South London Pacific Tiki Bar, 340 Kennington Road, London SE11 4LD. 7pm to midnight.
Kennington predictions for 2014
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.
The Three Stags – Kennington’s most ethical and Charlie Chaplin-ish pub
Other Kennington pubs boast Charlie Chaplin connections but The Three Stags trumps them all. It has a Chaplin’s Corner where Charlie’s errant father used to drink – Charlie wrote in his autobiography that this is where he saw his dad for the last time. If you can set its morbid history out of your mind then it’s worth securing the table in Chaplin’s Corner on the right in the photo below – it’s enclosed in dark wood and frosted glass for extra privacy.
We recently visited for the first time since a refit. It’s a good quality gastropub with table service and a selection of real ales, but what marks it out are its ethics. It was rated as a Three Star Sustainability Champion for the second year running this year, meaning it scored highly for sourcing local, seasonal food, focusing on animal welfare, and engaging with the community and the environment.
Plus they have 50,000 bees living on their roof, surrounded by pots of herbs such as lavender, thyme, basil, mint and sage, and flowers such as calendula, poppies, nasturtiums, cornflower and sedum. Honey can be purchased for a minimum of £20 per jar, all of which goes to fund a charitable project in Bali. Their queen bee is nicknamed Mae West and their drones are named Barack Obama.
The Three Stags is located at the junction of Kennington Road and Lambeth Road so it’s ideal for a drink or meal before or after visiting the Imperial War Museum, and good for a Sunday roast in winter.
Cable Bar & Café
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 White Bear Theatre Pub
The White Bear, on Kennington Park Road, is a pub of two halves. The front half is an Irish sports pub with lots of regulars and rather an edgy atmosphere. The back half is an extraordinarily intimate, award-winning fringe theatre with a capacity of just 50. It was established in 1988 and actors who’ve appeared there include Emily Watson, Tamzin Outhwaite, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Mark Little, Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Natalie Imbruglia.
Plays we’ve seen here:
* One about Byron, the Shelleys, and their frantic sex lives.
* A play featuring objectionable middle class couples arguing and cheating on each other over barbecues – or we saw half of it anyway (the problem with leaving a theatre this small during the interval is your absence will definitely be noticed in the second half – sorry about that guys).
* A good production of Noel Coward’s Still Life, the play on which Brief Encounter was based, which is about an abortive affair.
* Recently we saw Coward, a rather unflattering depiction of Noel Coward and his sex life.
So is the White Bear the theatre equivalent of the Locker Room? No – they had a play by Ayn Rand recently so we’re guessing that was a sex free zone. Check out their programme here and get along.
Here’s a photo of Coward (that’s him, sitting down):
