Ahead of our profound and moving, yet highly subjective, ‘Top Ten Best Restaurants in Greater Kennington’ (plus one Sunday roast) countdown, we recently enjoyed a Sunday roast at local stalwart the Black Dog in Vauxhall and were here to tell you about it.
Aside from the roast, what the Dog is particularly good at are the starters and bar snacks. With a Spanish/European tilt, what looked good to us were the padron peppers, squid with wasabi mayo, and their signature Scotch eggs. For roast one, your scribe had the sirloin steak roast with a curious spinach and cream mash. The steak was very lean and thinly sliced, with generous vegetables and a not-very-Sunday-roast-but-still-delicious curious creamed spinach mixture. Sides of horseradish and apple sauce were also a treat.
Pork
Steak
Our Ombudsman Phil had the pork belly roast, which was a thick slice of rolled pork belly topped off with some crackling. The meat was well cooked, with delicious but not overwhelming fat. Yorkshire pudding pulled off the great feat of being soft yet crispy – a triumph. Good veggies alongside, not over cooked. Paul is a gravy man and gave it a big tick. There is also a good selection of Casque Marque accredited ales and beers. And a good value at £17.
The look at the Dog is one of a fun antiques shop mixed with assorted kitchen tables. The crowd is an interesting mix of middle class white people under the age of 35. If this describes yourself, then congratulations and you’ll fit right in. if, like us, that does not describe yourself then you’ll still feel at home as the atmosphere is very inviting. But please be warned, that the toilet marked ‘U’ is ‘urinals’ and does NOT stand for ‘unisex’. God knows we’re not making that mistake again.
As our exercise calendar is looking almost as barren as the wine aisle of Boris’s local ‘Tesco Metro’, we decided to rededicate ourselves to more achievable tasks, namely eating out. A great place to start is the critically acclaimed Guyanese Caribbean restaurant Kaieteur Kitchen. Formerly a long standing food stall outside Elephant shopping centre, it now proudly has its own spiffy premises for both eat in and take away in Castle Square, across the street from Elephant and Castle overground. It’s a bit tucked away on the first floor, but well worth the effort.
Upon arrival at Kaiteur everyone is offered either ginger beer or mango juice, served by the very friendly staff and the grand dame of the kitchen, Faye Gomes. The menu at Kaieuter changes weekly, and sometimes daily, and on this trip your scribe had the beef stew served with okra. The okra was a rice based dish mixed with chili and garlic. The beef had been very slowly cooked and could not wait another second to fall off the bone, made earthier with sinew and connective tissue. Served with carrots, scotch bonnet chili and what appeared to be cassava sauce.
Jan from accounts had the chicken curry. Served on the bone, it was so slowly cooked that it almost fell off the bone when picked up. It was drier than an Indian curry but just as spicy and rich. Both dishes were served with either roti or spinach rice. We chose the rice, which was reminiscent of Jamaican rice and peas minus the peas with a nice stream of coconut milk. We also shared a side of a midly sweet creamed pumpkin. Meanwhile, the chaps at the table next to us were tucking into deep fried and chunky plantain and meatballs about the dimensions of a baby’s head.
If you aren’t familiar with the unique cuisine from Guyana, it is essentially food with its foundation in Africa. However, with the movement of labour around the world, the food was heavily influenced by Chinese, Indian and Portugese fare making it quite unique to its Caribbean neighbours. Ka is good, home-made Guyanese fare served with friendly warmth. And with a background of late 80’s slow jams to accompany your salted cod stew, you’ll be glad you broke that resolution only 18 days after you started it, just like we did…. But will it make our much heralded and upcoming top 10???
There are plenty of things that you can experience in Elephant and Castle. For instance, being hit by a car. Or being mowed down by a Just Eat delivery person cycling on the pavement. But one doesn’t often experience high quality Chinese food there. It’s for this reason that we were devastated when our favourite Cantonese ‘Dragon Castle’ closed in March 2020, but they are now back with a vengeance.
They taste better than they look
With the cheap chandeliers, plastic plants, lazy Susan’s and even a water feature, at Dragon Castle you delightfully experience the feel of being in a mega restaurant in Beijing without the torture of six lateral flow tests and a 10 hour flight. But alas, you are at the top of Walworth Road. We commenced our feast with the dim sum sampler. Dim sum is a speciality of DC, and they did not disappoint. Crammed with prawns and veg, they were congealed in a very pleasing way and were almost certainly made fresh on the day.
My dining partner enjoyed a main of braised pork belly and broccoli flavoured with soy and spices which the dining partner described as ‘delicious and also generously sized’. A slight sweetness to balance the saltiness and meltingly soft pork was evident. It was a delicious soft fat, as you want, but with a high ratio of pork meat and plenty of it.
Your scribe ordered the sizzling beef and black bean with green pepper, onion, and chilli. Served with generous soy sauce, the beef was extremely lean and tender. It was just on the right side of spicy with the black bean sauce creating a big, palate clinging flavour. The generous sticky rice portions were served in metal lined baskets looking not dissimilar to mop buckets.
Beef
Pork
Dragon Castle is not as affordable as it used to be but still good value for the quality of the food. We ordered draft beer as the wines started at £25. Importantly. there were not a retinue of delivery people scurrying in and out (but DC is on Deliveroo). A fun night out, and the risk of a vehicular injury could perhaps even add to the adventure.
Before we commence with our run down of how we can treat people we love, lets think about all the Greater Kenningtonians out there who are struggling with the basics. If you would like to help them but aren’t really sure how, the Vauxhall Foodbank is a good place to start. You can either donate money, volunteer, or donate food directly at Tesco Kennington Lane or Sainsburys Nine Elms.
If you’re anything like us, you’d rather have a pencil crammed into your ear canal than face the throngs of Oxford/Regent Streets right now. And if you like to hold objects before you buy them you can do this in our very own manor, and we hope you find our little guide useful.
FOOD
Italo Vauxhall and Mimi’s Deli both have a range of Italian foodie gift ideas including wines, beers, spices, panettone (or as we call it ‘stale cake’), oils, cheeses and even posh sauces. Mimi’s has also turned the former seating area into a kind of pop up Christmas shop in the back, not visible from the road.
Mercato Metropolitano has all of the Italian fare outlined above and also feature some Italian themed hampers and they’re also selling wreaths. They have wonderful meats and cheeses but if they sit under your tree for 10 days the smell might rather dampen your Christmas vibe. Don’t forget they have a new shop at 1 Walworth Road.
Ever thought about buying an edible Christmas gift our own beloved Oval Farmer’s Market? They stock many things that won’t perish under the tree such as chocolates and wine. You have one more Saturday before Christmas!
The Beefeater Gin Distillery has a lovely but totally deserted gift shop offering unusual, limited run gins and gin accessories. You can also buy a gift voucher to tour the distillery (we can confirm it’s great fun). Perfect for your loved one who likes a nice holiday tipple or who just has a drinking problem.
NON FOOD
Now, when you think Christmas shopping the first thing you say to yourself probably isn’t ‘ooh, lets go to the place behind Elephant Station where they keep the bins’. But, if you venture there you will discover a clutch of independent shops in Castle Square that used to exist in the shopping centre. Great for you younger folk looking for baseball caps, hoodies and clothes.
If you are in Elephant pop over to the new SoLo Craft Fair which is a collective of artists and creatives who now run a bricks and mortar shop. 60 small businesses have their work shown on rotation and during our journey we saw affordable jewellery, handbags, baskets, cards, scarves, bath salts, prints and T-shirts.
From the chains, cages and chew toys in the window, for many years we thought Hound Hut in Clapham Road was actually a bondage/S&M shop. However, it is your one stop shop for everything canine, even refrigerated dog food.
Next to the (not S&M) Hound Hut sits new kid on the block “Pretty Shiny Shop’ which swaggeringly exudes itself to be Greater Kennington’s Christmas Shop (steady) and they stock a range or cards, houseware items, Christmas tree goodies, and small pieces of jewellery.
Mary over at Windmill Flowers stocks not just flowers but also collectables and houseware accessories.
In addition to books, Vanilla Black also has some nice gift ideas such as cards and masks and also a few food items. We think VB secretly hates us but we’ve moved on with our lives and are plugging them anyway. And since you are over there, I Due Amici has some fine looking panettone hanging in their windows (no that isn’t a rude euphemism). And if at this very second you are thinking ‘what happened to Didi and Franc’. Well, we have no idea but try asking in VB.
As a second joyless year comes to a close, have you ever thought about the gift of comedy? Our local gold star comedy club Always be Comedy are doing E vouchers for their virtual and socially distanced and live events (the virtual being very surreal) at The Tommyfield. Recently we’ve seen Harry Hill, Al Murray, Sara Pascoe and more.
Most importantly, this has been yet another shitty year for almost all of us. So you have the Kennington Runoff seal of approval to treat yourself during the 2021 festive season!
We recently visited local stalwart Kennington Tandoori for a bit of North Indian action. We always had a soft spot for KT before it went all swishy a few years back, so our visit this time was to ascertain value for money.
Your scribe started with four Momos (think Himalayan gyoza) filled with chicken and a very spicy and pleasing dip. My dining partner modestly proclaims themselves to be an *coughs* onion bhaji connoisseur, describing their starter as ‘first class’. They were huge (were talking tennis balls) which gave them a great chew offset with external crunch. It was also served with a delightful hot sauce. And to soak up our mains we had an Afghan naan with onion seed hot out of their on-site tandoor.
Tennis, anyone?
For the mains your scribe consumed the king prawn bhuna which consisted of four huge prawns in a tomato sauce with caramelised onion. There were added chilies for a kick with a very well measured amount of kaffir lime leaves. My dining partner felt a bit disappointed with their aubergine and potato masala mains, describing it as a bit bland and not well seasoned. However, this was compensated by the tarka dhal with its rich, warm spices. And of course the Cobra beers just emerged after each course, but we can’t imagine why.
Prawn
Aubergine
As with so many restaurants, KT is one that appears full even when it isn’t. When our food took a while we initially queried this but when we witnessed the volume of ‘Just Eat’ bags going in and out we realised that much of their custom is virtual, so prepare yourself. Other than the helmet clad couriers the crowd is a good mix of younger and older locals. On a visit a few years ago we had the sublime honour (or horror, depending on your persuasion) of sitting between no less than Anne Widdecombe and Ken Clarke. We can’t guarantee that your visit will reach such giddying heights/lows, but you are within the division bell so you never know.
Is it good value for money? We would err on the side of nearby Ghandi’s, but if variety is what you are after it’s a good change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When your brain thinks ‘I really want a quiet meal out tonight’ the first thing that pops into your head hopefully isn’t ‘Walworth Road’. And it wasn’t ours until we got wind of a delightfully and totally old school Thai joint called ‘Mama Thai’ that reminded us of a Thai place that you might see off a night market in Bangkok.
We got there early
My associate had the Pad Prik Khing. Now this might sound like a name you’d call a psycho ex-boyfriend, but it was in fact a stir fry with chicken and aubergine which had a big red curry kick and fairly heavy on the fish sauce saltiness. Nice big flavours that paired quite well with a generously proportioned coconut fried rice for some sweet and salt balance.
Your scribe had the Baikapraow with chicken. It was a very pleasingly stir fry affair with loads of chili and loads of holy basil. Also mixed in was fish sauce, onion, ginger and a ‘don’t kiss me now’ amount of garlic. For a starter we shared spring rolls which we are pretty sure were home made and delicious.
On of the best things about Mama Thai is that it is BYOB and there is a handy Tesco Metro across the street. Apparently its Pinot with Thai. So with two starters, one main and two rice dishes the total came to well under £30.
Whilst eating our old school Thai we were entertained by some very pleasing mid naughties Ibiza chill out music. When paying the bill we told the endearingly grandfatherly proprietor that we enjoyed the music and it was unique to hear in a Thai restaurant. Without missing a beat he replied ‘I love techno and dance music and it really makes people happy. I’ve been to Buddha Bar in Paris a few times’. Wow
If that comment doesn’t make you love living in Greater Kennington then we don’t know what does!
