Now that it’s fully up and running, we’ve made a return visit to The Book Elephant in Sayer Street. In 2019 we attended a consultation on the street hosted by builder Lendlease. They informed us that Sayer St. would be lined with independent shops such this very bookstore. Well, Joe and the Juice and, god help us, Gail’s Bakery must have nodded off at that point in the presentation because they’ve just rocked up. More on this sad news later.
Owner Tomasz Wrobel has wanted to open a bookshop since her arrived in the UK from Poland 20 years ago. He chose the Elephant due to its rich history, vibrancy, and diversity (flattery will get you everywhere, Tomasz). The shop has a large fiction section, true crime, science, travel, children’s books, LGBT+, and quite a range of left leaning political books. They also sell cards, bookmarks, and book related gifts. They sell tea and coffee and have a small seating area where you can enjoy your new purchase. You can also order books and they arrive in two days. Take that Amazon.
We’ve deduced that the secret trick undertaken by developers like Lendlease and Berkeley is that they initially rent to appealing small businesses and when most of the flats are sold they jack up the rent and before you know it you’re stuck with a megachain bakery. Why this is relevant is that small businesses like The Book Elephant need our trade now more than ever. So you have your mission, dear readers!
Located in the heart of trendy Elephant Park, Karen from Finance and your scribe find ourselves revisiting pizza palace 400 Rabbits, the newest in a south London collection of four pizzerias. Going for the youthful and fun market (us), the design aesthetic at 400 Rabbits is very much ‘post industrial meets aisle 6 at Ikea’. From the outset service was similarly bright and welcoming with tap water freely offered. When we discovered the negronis were only £6.50 we ditched the water and we can report that said negronis had the precise bittersweet bite you expect of the drink, served simply in a small glass with ice and no faff. Lots of other cocktails are available. As we’re journalists of the classiest ilk, with the negronis we enjoyed delicious Catalan olives.
Your scribe ordered the anchovy, tomato based pizza. It came with an abundance of silvery anchovies and flecked with plump capers. You can imagine the umami kick. To complement these were the addition of shallots, black olives and rosemary. All worked together very well. The crust is slow fermentation sourdough, crispier and more robust – although thin – than the chewy Neapolitan style along the road at Theo’s. There are plenty of toppings choices in weird and wonderful combinations that we imagine change regularly given that a whole section was devoted to “Summer Pizzas”. Walnuts and kimchi being just two of them. Karen’s customary grab for a slice was countered by a deft fork stab of her index finger.
As Karen is currently having a ‘Mounjaro moment’ we’re surprised that she accepted our offer for dinner in the first place. Exhibiting profound discipline, she opted for a smaller pizza accompanied by a salad. She had the beef which came with shallots and guindilla chilies as well as the ground beef, so again a complex topping portfolio. Karen enjoyed the pizza but nevertheless smothered it in the free chili oil, which perhaps indicates that the Mounjaro hasn’t kicked in just yet. As Karen keeps banging on about tomatoless pizza (what’s the POINT!) we promised to add that some pizzas are indeed white, so you’ve been warned.
A very good pizzeria overall, but will it make our Top 10 List ™ in the new year? All pizzas are around £14 with £10 pizzas on Tuesday. The best bit is they make their own gelato, but that didn’t fit into Karen’s new lifestyle so we passed.
The time has arrived yet again in the Greater Kennington cultural season (yes, it’s a thing) for the free and massive MA show over at City and Guilds in Kennington Park Road and of course we’ve just checked it out for you. Hours at the bottom.
What we appreciate about the MA show is that it’s not just about painting, for example sometimes it’s just a rocking chair with snails on it. But other areas show the work of conservationists, restorers, wood carving and sculpture. All set within those beautiful Georgian buildings in Kennington Park Road. The themes this year appear to be the environment, kitchenware and Styrofoam.
As you meander through the galleries you can read the bios of the artists and gain insight into their process, theory, outlook, and motivation. There is something here for everyone and some of the work is quite stunning. The work below is a reimagining of the painting ‘The Execution of Lady Jane Grey’ at the National with the subject being Justice itself with climate change activists in the background. As with this work, a lot of the artists are on hand to walk you through what you’re looking at. In other words, don’t be an armchair critic as the artist is probably behind you.
PUBLIC OPENING HOURS
11:00-18:00 Tuesday 9 September 11:00-18:00 Wednesday 10 September 11:00-18:00 Thursday 11 September 12:00 – 20:00 Friday 12 September 10:00-17:00 Saturday 13 September
Yesterday we escaped our subterranean office cubicles to attend the new play, ‘The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return’ at Southwark Playhouse. As the play is interspersed with party music and scenes of drug taking, we had to get it signed off from HR manager Keith, who’s musical nirvana was achieved this year at Glasto when he saw Rod Stewart and Lulu singing ‘Hot Legs’. He therefore rejected our request stating that the music was, in his own parlance, ‘too trendy’. When we gently pointed out that these bangers are in fact over 20 years old he relented.
The Chaos is set mostly over one seminal night in the lives of Luton teenagers Voice and Lewis. Also in the mix is Lakeisha, who assumes various guises from love interest to mother, birthday girl, and fact checker. Armed with fake Polo shirts, Top Shop jeans and Lewis’s Blackberry, the boys are caught at the crossroads of ebullience and insecurity, of teenage rebellion and adult responsibility. Coming from rough backgrounds, Voice describes Luton as a dead end for some and the start of an amazing journey for others. The airport being used as an apt metaphor for escape.
We follow the boys as they get ready for a banging bash around the corner, and out pops the Lynx and clean shirts. To symbolise their evolution into adulthood, the only booze they can get their hands the tipple of their parents, gin. This is a very physical play, and in parts it resembles interpretive dance more than theatre. We particularly enjoyed a slightly spaced-out Lewis as he watches life, including his own, pass before him. This reminded us of when Phil from accounts comes to work on a Monday morning with flecks of glitter still in his ear.
The phrase oft repeated by Voice is that the boys are on ‘the precipice of choice’. As the party draws near the boys debate the merits of going to Uni, entering relationships, and figuring out how to not end up like their parents. Caught within a cloudy vortex of violence and gangs, they know the odds are stacked against them. Will their lives flourish and be impactful, or will they fail to evolve and become obsolete, not unlike that Blackberry in Lewis’s hand?
The Chaos was first performed at the highly acclaimed Summerhall at Edinburgh Fringe (where we saw Baby Reindeer before anyone had heard of it, but now we’re just showing off) and a review of that production received great reviews from the publication who want to be just like us, The Guardian.
The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return is on now until 27 September at Southwark Playhouse Borough and tickets can be nabbed here.
We’re aware that we say this every month, but it’s our favourite time of the year! Unless you fall asleep on your device frequently, you might have noticed that we have an affection for 1. Local History 2. Free stuff. And while not all of the activities during Heritage Week are in fact free, a lot of them are. All of the fun listed below is local, but if you possess the malice and gaul to leave Greater Kennington, then the Lambeth Festival guide can be found here to explore the further reaches of our amazing Borough. Granted, our Borough might not feel so amazing on a Thursday morning when the binmen haven’t turned up and you have fox strewn Tesco containers in front of your home, but let us remain positive.
Kennington Common (now Kennington Park) and Kennington Oval cricket ground have a conjoined reputation that extends well beyond our hallowed manner. As the green spaces between the City and Westminster began to evaporate in Georgian London, people had to look further afield to partake in activities such as cricket, football, promenading, mass demonstrations, and or course hanging people. And it was to suburban Kennington they flocked.
In the early Victorian era the Common was shrinking under impinging bricks and roads. Also, watching people being hanged was no longer the family fun that it once was. As cricket requires a great deal of space (so we’re told), the newly formed Surrey Cricket Club had to find new digs, and with a little help from the Prince of Wales (who’s feathers still adorn the Surrey Cricket Badge) in 1845 they were able to take over a nearby market garden, and this was the genesis of the cricket ground that we know to this day.
Six years after the inception of the Oval we meet an almost forgotten sporting superstar named Richard Manks, who granted it an unexpected publicity coup that would secure its place as the world’s first for profit sports facility. Manks was a master of the equally forgotten sport of pedestrianism, a form of competitive walking which attracted a sort of cult like following in the gambling mad world of Victorian Britain. But this wasn’t a team activity, and in 1851 people descended in their thousands to watch Manks walk for 1000 miles in 100 days to and bet on how long he would last.
Things didn’t start entirely well for Manks and following an unfortunate bout of diarrhoea he abandoned his mission at the Oval after 129 miles. Undeterred, a few months later he completed the task with a form of assistance not too dissimilar to how we get through a day at the Observer; half hourly rests and the nutritional aids of beef, ale, and Brandy infused tea. The dusky hues of night time was a particular draw to the 3000 personed audience and it can claim the additional prize of being the first artificially lit sports complex on earth, and the publicity provided by Manks secured this.
For some unknown reason by the end of the 1860’s the thrill of watching people walking in a giant circle diminished. However, the Oval powered on and with its newfound renown hosted the first representative football match between England and Scotland, in addition to hosting the FA cup for almost 20 years. As its fame grew it was also used for rugby and football and even used for exhibitions of American baseball. While the sport of Manks might be now overlooked, the same can never be said about the world’s first profit making venue that he helped to immortalise.
Located in the subtropical oasis of Bonnington Square with a looming backdrop of Vauxhall skyscrapers, we recently paid a visit to Italo Vauxhall. We were joined by Karen from Finance, who helpfully informed us that we hadn’t been in five years. We suspect that she was actually fishing for a free meal, but voicing this would just make us look, well, cynical.
From the outset, Italo feels quirky and homespun, and has been going strong since 2008. The menu changes daily but to give you an essence, your scribe had a sandwich served on Focaccia and stuffed with roast chicken, lemon and dill yoghurt, spiced harissa cucumber, sumac and plenty of lettuce. The offering was so stuffed that pieces of it were falling on the table. The bread gave it a salty kick with the chicken (it appeared to be thigh), roasted to perfection. Stuffed and gorgeous.
Karen chose the plate of the day: braised haricots blancs with honey roasted shallots, parmesan, chives and sourdough toast. She must have missed the memo directing guests to not spend more than the host, and in a moment of frenzy she added chorizo, putting £1.50 on the bill. What arrived was a generous portion of butter beans in a creamy sauce that leaned heavily on the parmesan and chives (no bad thing). Nestling in amongst were some banana shallots made sweeter with honey, alongside a few slices of that pricey chorizo. With two pieces of sourdough atop, it felt quite decadent. It’s a rich dish and Karen felt happily full after picking up her plate and drinking every last drop.
Inside the shop there’s a small range of high quality dried pastas, sauces, bottles and jars, olive oil, spirits, beans and suchlike. They also make some excellent Italian coffee. And it certainly speaks to quality ingredients being used in what they serve up and, on our lunchtime visit, this proved popular with locals. At this point you’re probably thinking ‘whats not to love’? Well dear reader, there is always something to not love and in this case it’s the price. The sandwich was £11 and the beans with aforementioned chorizo being £12. So not an every day lunch destination.
If you’re new to the area or just don’t get out of the house much, Bonnington Square has a fascinating history that we wrote about a few years ago, and a fine place to stroll.
We always enjoy the eccentric offerings at the quirky Gasworks Gallery in Oval, and their current exhibition certainly doesn’t disappoint. Previous shows have featured a giant Styrofoam coffin, and another saw the space turned into a Hampstead Heath cruising area. So we popped open the subterranean port hole to our office and went to inspect the latest offering.
And the offering is ‘Critical Art Theory’ by the very vivacious 87 year old Japanese/American artist Ben Sakoguchi. The artists’ earliest memories were of being held in an internment camp during WW2 with his family. This trauma informed his view of history only being developed by white American/European men, and their failings being conveniently forgotten. We hope our CEO Kevin is reading this.
The 67 paintings in the show draw a rough chronological timeline from cave paintings up to the invention of photography. Using primarily painters from the canon (read…white dudes) he turns their view of the world on its head by comparisons to metal band KISS, Back to the Future, and Teenage Mutant Turtles, as you do. And if you’re thinking ‘Pop Art’ then you’ve hit the nose on the head and you get a prize. Occupants of the White House are also not spared a satirical eye. God knows with the current one he has enough material to fill fifty galleries.
When we saw these paintings online we thought they were collages and stencilled letters. In reality they are meticulously drawn paintings reminding us of detailed Japanese prints. Some of the pictures within pictures also look like film posters. They could also spring to mind cartoons that your grandad sketched in anger after a few too many brandies on Christmas day.
Many of the paintings on show engage directly with racial subjugation and gender bias. And while Critical Art Theory might lack the side splittingly humorous appeal of a Styrofoam coffin, it’s an intriguing journey into how the world has been shaped by the white male gaze for millennia, as viewed by artists who we’ve learned not to question.
Critical Art Theory is open now until 7 September and is totally free. But please remember that if you want to take part in the fun it is only open Wed-Sun 12 to 6. If you want even more fun they are having an artist open day on 6 September and details can be found here.
We last visited Walcot Stores shortly after it opened in March, 2024. We rated it highly, but that was in its infancy so we recently popped over again to check on the evolution of the establishment. This time around we weren’t burdened with Phil from Accounts, who had a very different interpretation of having a drink on a Sunday. Walcot Stores is tucked away the top of the rather lovely Walcot Square.
Female owned and operated, chief Barista Milly has given Walcot Stores a recycled, repurposed and sustainable look that’s clean and appealing. They sell a good collection of things that you don’t need but nevertheless want such as swishy notebooks, frames, tote bags and gift cards. They also have a selection of cakes and pastries to accompany your drink. The most recent develop are lunchtime sandwiches, made on site daily.
On the drinks front, we saw a number of overworked yet attractive folk popping in for a flat white, latte, matcha, macchiato, or their range of teas in addition to juices. There was probably a shot of turmeric popping around somewhere to make the experience even more on trend. Most importantly, Milly told us that it is perfectly fine to take your laptop and use their wifi (just don’t hang around all day. We know what you lot are like). You can see people working from there in a photo that looks like it was taken after we’d just fallen on the floor.
If you happen to be a fan of gangster movies then you might recognise Walcot Stores from the cameo role it makes in the 1990 film ‘The Krays’. It could have been chosen for the film because even in 1990 this kind of ‘Are you Being Served’ corner shop was almost extinct. Only watch the second half of this gruesome clip if you have a very niche interest in watching that guy out of Spandau Ballet (kids, ask your parents who they are), beating the daylights out of someone.
