Category Archives: Stuffing your face

Wreath Making Fun!

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We think that festive wreaths are an unheralded part of the Christmas season. Not only do they look good on your door, but they can also double as a festive tiara or indeed a massive bracelet. And if you’re anything like us, they’re also a hell of a lot easier than putting up a tree that your cat knocks over after a few days. Our crack team of KR investigators have sourced three very local organisations where you can make your own wreath while also helping the community.  

The good folk over at Vauxhall City Farm are once again having a wreath making workshop and they run every Saturday until 11 December.  Whether you prefer a loose and unstructured wreath or a disciplined floral door halo, the sessions last for 2 ½ hours and offer one to one tutelage by staff and maybe even a nosey donkey.  The workshops are pretty dear at £40 but please remember that the money generated goes into supporting the farm and their work with school kids and animals. 

Our pals over at Roots and Shoots in Kennington are hosting their annual wreath making workshop on 3 and 4 December at 1pm and 4pm. Of course Roots and Shoots know a thing or two about plants, so expect guidance that will empower you to make your own wreaths in years to come. It is £50, but the cost enticingly includes ‘minced pies and mulled wine galore’, so imagine all the creative fun you can have after knocking back five or six.  As with the City Farm, all proceeds go to supporting their work in the community and apprentice schemes for vulnerable youth.  

Finally. On Friday, 29 November The Fentiman Arms in Vauxhall/Oval will be hosting their own wreath making workshop with a masterclass from our own Mary from Windmill Flowers who will supply all the mistletoe and ribbons you need. This is coming in at £45 but hopefully this will include some free treats.  The Fentiman holds a special place in the hearts of Runoff staff as it used to be the venue of our staff Christmas parties until senior management decided to downscale to a venue that we are not allowed to mention for legal reasons.  *shuffles papers and leaves the room*. 

The Three Stags Sunday Roast

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Last weekend the Runoff visited celebrated Lambeth North pub The Three Stags for a long overdue visit to check out their Sunday roast. As part of our contract with management we work on only limited hours at weekends so we arrived at a venue not yet full of patrons, but when full is a good mix of locals, groups, and confused tourists who were led to believe that the pub is actually in Waterloo. The atmosphere is kind of punky with a huge range of music and, on our visit, loads of Halloween decorations and very spookily attired yet well informed bar staff. On that subject, the slightly morbid Chaplin corner is where Charlie last saw his dad alive.

My colleague had the free range pork belly which was a generous, fat and meaty balanced slab with loads of gravy.  The roast hit all the main points well and was a very solid effort. All roasts come with a Yorkshire pudding, which gets a big tick. The roast potatoes were flavourful with a soft middle and some crisp edges, similar to how our bodies have evolved since the pandemic.  The star veg was some cabbage, with just enough bite and surprinsingly very peppery. 

  • We’ve said it before, but
  • taking pictures of food isn’t easy!

Your scribe had the chicken which was a mighty leg and thigh. The stuffing was a bit on the mean side, but was nice and flavourful.  The honey glazed carrots and parsnips weren’t too strong in the honey notes and were so plentiful that we had to leave some on the plate, and  cooked just this side of firm. And the roasts were topped with, um, watercress.  Everything seemed very much home cooked, and that is what you want from a Sunday roast at a good price. And no to mention, they have a good selection of ales.

Although we were certainly carnivorous on this visit, The Stags takes pride in ‘ethical food with an emphasis on more veg and better meat’. And apparently they are South London’s most sustainable pub. In fact, the menu indicates that in order to protect the rainforest they no longer serve beef.  If you’re a true Sunday roast purist, we suggest the Jolly Gardeners in Vauxhall or the very ‘cheffy’ 24 The Oval. But if you live in Lambeth North and want a well priced, dependable,  sturdy and fun roast you could do a lot worse than The Stags. And if your tastes extend to listening to Lionel Ritchie while sitting under a picture of Sid Vicious you’ll fit right in. 

Paladar

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The extremely hip restaurant ‘Paladar’ has been on our radar since it opened in 2018 but our attempts to review the place have been consistently rebuffed by Runoff senior management.  They’ve alternately stated that it’s too expensive, that it’s not technically in Greater Kennington, and then tried to maliciously insinuate that we weren’t ‘hip enough’. When they relented last week we grabbed our chance. 

Paladar is a Latin American fusion restaurant in St. George’s Circus near Elephant & Castle/Lambeth North. The restaurant doubles as an art space, and on our visit featured work by Ecuadorean artist Ulises Valarezo. The crowd is more West End chic than we would expect in these parts, and in fact we were sat next to ‘Leave a Light On’ pop star Tom Walker and loads of people laughing while flicking their hair. 

  • Pork belly
  • Lettuce hearts

The menu is, you guessed it, sharing plates and five items served two people just fine. We were served by a precise, chirpy and professionally drilled service staff who knew quite a bit about what they were serving and actually spoke Spanish to one another.  Highlights were  texture rich tuna tartare tostadas accompanied by a fragrant salsa which  reminded us ever so slightly of a delicious, yet expensive, hand soap. The pork belly tacos had an interesting Chinese crispy duck sticky quality and were wrapped in lettuce leaves as opposed to a tortilla. On the veggie front, we enjoyed compelling, deep fried tapioca croquettes which were savory but just verging on being sweet. We also indulged on chargrilled lettuce hearts with a nut based topping.

Croquettes and Tuna

It is rather amazing that restaurants such as Paladar survived the Covid maelstrom, which partially explains why they send you about a dozen confirmation emails after booking. With a bottle of wine the total bill came to £84 which is by no means cheap but it will teach the management team a thing or two before they accuse us of being less than cool. Money well spent even if you don’t get the chance to sit next to a minor pop star in a bobble hat. 

Paladar also sell South American wines in their adjacent wine shop.  We enjoyed a divine £26 Montes Colchagua Valley Merlot which was less than a tenner more than was going in the shop. 

Sprout

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If you’re ever out and about in Kennington Cross you are probably aware that the hardest working man in the patch is Abraham over at Bouquets and Beans in front of St. Anselms, and we interviewed him in 2019. We are proud to announce that the second hardest working man in the Cross is Ned, who set up the fruit and veg stall ‘Sprout’ in March. Ned also works at Bouquets and Beans, and we recently had a chat with him about his spin off project. 

Ned’s passion is produce and cooking, and his day job is working in the catering industry with a view to starting his own catering business. Over the past 18 months the world of catering more or less evaporated as a result of you know what, so with more time on his hands Ned, with support from Abraham, identified a big vegetable shaped hole in the Greater Kennington market.  

Ned tries to use British suppliers but does not admit to letting a few Italian items populate his stall from time to time. The staples are heritage tomatoes, Sicilian lemons, courgettes, leeks, potatoes, salads, apples, and strawberries. He also likes to feature a couple of herbs such as dill or parsley. The Runoff staff have bought some very healthy vegetables at Sprout and managed to turn them into unimaginably unhealthy creations such as aubergine parmigiana, cauliflower curry and courgette lasagne. And now we would NEVER use this site as a platform for self promotion, but how did this raspberry tart end up getting photographed? 

On the practical side, Ned starts setting up his stall at 5:20am (!!!) rain or shine and is open on Friday 7:30 to 5 and Saturday 8:30 to 4. As a cook himself, Ned can also give you some inspiration about what to make. And what happens to the leftover veg at the end of the weekend, you ask? Well he supplies it to our friends over at The Jolly Gardeners in Black Prince Road.

Theos Pizza and Tiramisu

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Pizza helped us in many ways during lockdown. For some it was like a familiar blanket in troubled times. For us it reconfirmed that we can no longer pull off skinny jeans. We at Runoff Towers find that by a mile the best pizza in Greater Kennington is Theos up in Elephant. Our opinion has been seconded by no less than Vogue Magazine (which might not be an accolade as I doubt their readers actually eat pizza).  And now they feature award winning Tiramisu. 

  • Gorgonzola
  • Anchovy

On the pizza front my colleague had the aubergine and Gorgonzola. An adventurous choice, the aubergine was very soft and this was offset by the sharp hit of pecorino followed by the blue hit of Gorgonzola. Your scribe had a ‘my pressure needs to be checked’ salt kick of an anchovy, capers, olive and mozzarella pizza. All the salty elements were balanced well, and the best element of these pizzas is that they are served on a sourdough bread that is blistered on just the good side of being burned. 

Indeed, Theo’s has just won an award for best Tiramisu in London, and in our opinion it is well deserved. It ticked all the boxes of ‘Italian almost trifle’ with a perfect balance of strong coffee, dark chocolate, creamy mascarpone and served between layers of soft cream. 

Upon hearing about this accolade some female members of the Runoff team, and a surprisingly large number of men, implored us to include a picture of the man behind the triamisu. When we observed that this serves no purpose other to objectify this young man they said ‘yeah, and what’s your point’? So in order to avoid industrial action please find his photo below. 

St. Anselm’s Festival

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We don’t have a great degree of inside intel on the St. Anselm’s Festival, but we are aware that it is this Saturday, 11 September, in Cleaver Square. If it is the new iteration of the Cleaver Square Festival, and we think it is, then it’s certainly a highlight on the Greater Kennington social calendar. Recently this magical and hilarious festival has transported us to some mythical location 200 miles and 20 years from from Greater Kennington. A tipsy Vicar! A tombola! A wholly inappropriate Punch and Judy show! Kate Hoey giving out Brexit Flyers! Posh dudes in Barbour jackets slurring into their fifth Pimms! 

But aside from all the side splitting antics outlined above, it looks like the day will feature loads of great stuff for kids, a dog show, music and good food. But most importantly, it will likely feature local small businesses and people selling their wares (Kennington Tandoori and Bee Urban usually pop over) and people selling homemade cakes and pies. The Festival is from 12 to 4, and there is a Festival church service from 10 to 11 at St. Anselm’s itself with refreshments (probably not involving Pimms, but one lives in hope). 

400 Rabbits

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We’ve done a lot of soul searching and have decided to embrace our inner hipster and allow the top knotted dinizens of the Elephant Park development into the Kennington Runoff catchment area. One reason is the good places to eat which can be found there. A recent discovery is the delightful ‘400 Rabbits’, a south London based pizza, craft beer and gelato micro chain that has recently emerged next to the spiffy Elephant Park park itself. Like it’s neighbour, Theo’s Pizzeria, it is all about the sourdough at 400 Rabbits and theirs is a slow fermented sourdough affair that is thinner and crispier than Theo’s but without the burnt blistering which we happen to love. 

The first thing you should know about 400 Rabbits is that it’s seriously cool. We’re not talking mismatched cutlery here, more like vintage toilets. We went on a weeknight and it was very quiet, and we attribute this to lingering hesitancy of eating out and also the inexorable rise in home deliveries. My work associate had a £4 negroni cocktail and ‘The Chorizo’ pizza. The nice base was offset by a good tomato sauce and decent mozzerella and chili and basil, with the chorizo supplied by Brindisa. 

  • Chorizo
  • Anchovy. Photograpphing food is hard.

Your scribe had a craft beer and ‘The Anchovy’ which featured a parsimonious amount of the little fishies and the salt kick was supplemented by a load of capers. Also featuring was red onion and a very dominant presence of earthy rosemary, which is not often encountered in a pizza. To top it all off our chirpy server then said ‘would you like some dips with your pizza’. We have no idea what this means but, feigning a kind of hipster confidence, we replied ‘ta, we’re good thanks’. 

400 Rabbits also prides itself on the gelatos and they did look splendid but after the pizzas, gelato wasn’t on the top of our list. The interior is fresh and bright with green highlights, a stone fired oven and open kitchen. 

Gandhi’s and a Vegan Surprise

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Gandhi’s in Kennington Cross is like a dear old aunt to us; always available for sustenance and forever reliable. But, much like that dear old aunt, if we don’t look after it well, it might just kick the bucket and be consigned to history. Or worse, become a Foxtons. So last night we swept away our football related cobwebs of gloom and gave auntie a face to face visit. 

On our visit we were surprised to see that Ghandi’s has really upped it’s game since our last visit in the flesh.  There are now a whole range of vegan dishes,  and from that menu we treated ourselves to a very rich spinach and potato starter. There were also vegan versions of other staples such as Biryani, Balti, Bhuna, and Jalfrezi. We’re used to pure veg South Indian, but vegan Indian is a whole new kettle of tofu. 

My associate had the Lamb Tikka Biryani, and it packed quite a flavour punch. The lamb was spicy and slow cooked in the tandoor and there were generous amounts of it. Mixed into it was rice that was infused with the flavours of the cooking, with additional spices. This came with an accompanying vegetable curry which was adequate, but not a spot on the lamb itself. 

Your intrepid scribe had Chicken Shaslick, which were succulent and dry cooked in the clay oven. There were an array of spices in evidence but the most dominant was cumin. There were also grilled tomatoes and onions thrown in for good measure. It was far from a curry and more like a kebab. 

As you can see by celebrity strewn pictures in the window, if its good enough for Richard and Judy, Neil and Christine Hamilton, and some lady who’s a dead ringer for Hyacinth Bucket then it has to be good enough for us mere mortals.*

*If you’re lucky enough to be under 30 ask your parents who these people actually are. 

A Party for the Elephant

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This coming Saturday (26th) the much loved and much refurbished Elephant and Castle elephant will be making a return to the area and perched in its new home in Castle Square, which is in Elephant Street behind the now mostly past tense shopping centre. We are dearly hoping that the statue will be dragged trojan horse style through the streets by the executives of Lendlease, but our dreams rarely come true. 

We give you this information as the return will be accompanied by a kind of street party, and we are all invited. According to the press release, the Elephant and Castle Town Centre Team (whoever the hell they are) will be laying on a whole day of family fun that includes world music and food, cocktails (!), history, dancers and talks. It runs from 11:00 to 17:00. 


A selection of local traders will make up the backbone of the event and will include Coma Y Beba and Caribbean dishes from Kaieteur Kitchen. As this is Elephant, also expect lots of Venezuelan and Colombian fare, in addition to African dishes. Also on hand is Vauxhall staple and ‘wow I never knew a pint could cost 12 quid’ taproom Mother Kellys, who will be opening a new outlet in Elephant Square. We expect free samples. 


And if you are thinking that this celebration is just a cynical way for the property developers to win over local residents we could not POSSIBLY comment. What we can comment on is the chance  to support local traders, eat some interesting global food and catch some free music and stimulate that long dormant grey matter.  For a video of the elephant losing it’s perch, see below.

An Elephant Springs Up

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Say what you will about the labyrinthine development at Elephant Park, but one thing that has emerged from site is a delightful little park that has all the relevant and cool people (and us) talking. It’s called ‘Elephant Springs’.

The Springs sprang to life a few weeks ago and is an unusual green and comfy space in an area in need of more greenery and fewer buildings. Perhaps picking up on themes of Africa and elephants, the park has sand, hammocks, lush greenery, cascading waterfalls, secluded spaces, and nooks for bats and birds. The main feature is the large, bubbling water park with water jets and slides. On the days we’ve been there this area has been overtaken with gangs of happy kiddos (at bottom), with  the greener areas populated by groups of people chatting or reading. We like to think the park is some small recognition of the diverse people of African origin who live nearby.

As our KR brains are almost constantly geared to eating, we have our eyes on south London micro chain ‘Four Hundred Rabbits’ which overlooks Elephant Springs. We haven’t been there yet, but our sources tell us that the sourdough pizzas, gelato, and craft beers are perfect on a summer’s day. As for the park, if you dare to question our objectivity, it is listed in hipster bible and ‘thank god I found it on the tube or else I’d have nothing to read’ magazine ‘Stylist’ as one of the best green spaces in London along with Hyde and Richmond Parks.

https://www.stylist.co.uk/travel/city-breaks/londons-best-free-parks/530399