The Feminist Library Summer Benefit

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

We first visited the Feminist Library earlier this year on what could have been its final weekend in its current building, until they got a last minute reprieve from their landlords Southwark Council. The council are still planning on hiking the rent up by 150%, but have given the Feminist Library a little longer to find new premises, thankfully. With this in mind, they are organising a Summer Benefit tomorrow – Saturday 2 July – to help raise funds for new premises.

The library is worth a trip, full of boxes of ’80s feminist zines, and quiet corners and beanbags on which to peruse them. Its Summer Benefit promises a choral installation, one-to-one performances in a lift, the launch of the Feminist Library Survival Song and award winning novelist Ali Smith In Conversation, plus stalls, zines, signed copies of books, food, drink, dancing and a photobooth performance. The finale will come from post-punk icons The Raincoats.

The party runs from 2pm until 10pm, and although advance tickets have already sold out, there will be a limited number of tickets on the door tomorrow.

FEMINIST LIBRARY, 5 Westminster Bridge Rd, London SE1 7XW, 020 7261 0879.

The Athenian – Greek street food

Posted on June 19, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

The Athenian is a popular recent arrival at The Artworks, serving delicious Greek street food – i.e. souvlaki, which are pita bread wraps – and more than making up for the loss of My Big Fat Greek Restaurant (which used to be where Mamuśka! is now).

The founders are Efthymios and Neofytos, two Londoners born and raised in Athens and Cyprus. They’re really friendly and the food is great.

The veggie option comes with talagani cheese, which they describe as being like halloumi but with a more refined texture and minty undertone. It did indeed melt in the mouth in a way that halloumi doesn’t.

The most exciting meat option is wild boar sausage,

They also sell Greek confectionery and Loux drinks, which they say are like Fanta but better:

Unlike a lot of Artworks food outlets, they’re open every day 11.30am to 10.30pm, and they’re expanding at a rate of knots with five other sites including Vauxhall Street Food Garden.

Address: Unit 16, The Artworks, Elephant Rd, London SE17 1AY

Phone: 07445 876716

we have an Instagram!

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

Follow us for pictures of controversial road signs, flytipping, cherryblossom, mouth-watering Brunswick House plates, eye-watering LASSCO price tags, and much more.

www.instagram.com/kenningtonrun

The Old Dairy at Vauxhall City Farm

Posted on June 5, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

We think we may have identified the most child-friendly corner of Greater Kennington, with the opening of the new extension to Vauxhall City Farm, and its star attraction, The Old Dairy Cafe.

A slick building with clean, minimal lines, it is at odds with the crafty, homespun aesthetic of the original farm buildings, which started life as a squat, and a neat visual metaphor for the area it sits in. It’s been busy on both occasions that we have visited, but there is plenty of seating both inside and out, with picnic tables around the duck pond for finer days.

They offer superior sandwiches and cakes – including gluten and dairy free options – and simple, homespun food, with a soup, salad, quiche, open sandwich and hot dish of the day in smaller and larger portion sizes, mostly vegetarian. We ordered the white bean “risotto” with asparagus, spinach and onion broth, and understood why quotation marks had been inserted once it arrived without a grain in sight. The leek and feta tart with olives and capers, and sun-dried tomato Spanish omelette were more satisfying and accurately described.

The cake stand:

For their core customer, they also provide a wide variety of Ella’s Kitchen products, a hot kids’ meal of the day (again in smaller and larger portion sizes), as well as a selection of mini sandwiches for smaller hands, and a pile of the iconic Ikea Antelop highchairs stacked in one corner, all in immaculate condition. There is a children’s play area in one corner of the cafe, and when we visited during their ‘Spring Spectacular’ there was a charming and well-attended story and rhyme time with an animal theme, complete with props. Watch out Tea House Theatre, pay attention NCT groups, there’s a new destination in Kennington’s own Nappy Valley.

Back to the revamped Oxymoron at the Royal Oak for food by Marcello

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

When we first wrote about The Royal Oak on Fitzalan Street, it was Kennington’s mystery pub. Now its mysteries have mostly been revealed, but it remains a magical place, with decor and atmosphere quite unlike any other pub we’ve been to.

Oxymoron at Royal Oak, Fitzalan Street exterior - kenningtonrunoff.com

Marcello is their new Italian chef and since his arrival the pub feels less like a squat and more like the finished article. It’s still highly eccentric, with resident pets and children, and the landlord William temporarily unable to serve because he’s fixing someone’s bike or showing off fossils he has found on the banks of the Thames, but you no longer feel like the flooboards are about to collapse beneath your feet.

There’s a lovely beer garden which catches the evening sun:

If these stacks of animals were at Newport Street Gallery they’d be selling for millions:

The Dundee Cake is not on the menu sadly, but the wildly diverse clientele did include a large contingent from Dundee, plus some twenty and thirty something hipsters, pillars of the community like the Earl of Bedlam and the queen of the Ragged Canteen, and a few stalwarts who’ve been drinking there for decades.

So what is on the menu? They serve food on Fridays, which is burger night with veggie and vegan options, Saturdays, which is fresh pasta night, and Sundays, when we went along. The food has a homemade vibe, with lots of flavour and lots of salt (like the pub and their fliers, come to think of it). They also serve sizeable, slow cooked meat and veggie brunches on weekends from 10am-3pm.

Starters cost £4. We went for some moist and salty fried courgettes with polenta chips:

Mains are £8.45. There were only two options so we had one of each. Chicken breast wrapped in parma ham served with taleggio fondue and braised fennel was creamy and indulgent. And this was a hearty risotto of radicchio & balsamic vinegar, with mature cheddar grated on top:

They have an uninspiring selection of beers on tap including Meantime Pale Ale, but we’ll forgive them as they make a point of serving our favourite Kernel by the bottle.

this is an old photo of the bar, which looks about 10% less chaotic now

There is so much going on in this pub we almost forgot there was a jazz/blues guitarist playing live. Before the guitarist came on, the music choices included Decades by Joy Division (one of the darkest pieces of music you’ll ever hear, requested by one of the Dundee contingent), and Topknot by Cornershop, which William informed us featured M.I.A. before she was famous, or as he called her in the manner of an old friend, Maya.

As you can probably tell by now Oxymoron is not your average pub, and it might just be our favourite.

Facebook
Twitter
Address: 78 Fitzalan St, London SE11 6QU
Phone: 07515 878976

Jeff Koons Now at Newport Street Gallery

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

One of the writers of this blog is a philistine who can’t abide modern artists explaining their art but enjoys shiny, colourful, huge, spectacular objects with a novel and amusing concept behind them. Jeff Koons fan? Yep, absolutely, so we were thrilled to hear the second show at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery would be Jeff Koons Now.

The huge, light Newport Street Gallery space provides the perfect setting for Balloon Monkey (Blue):

Likewise this giant Play-Doh has Newport Street Gallery written all over it. This is made of aluminium, while Balloon Monkey (Blue) is made of stainless steel:

The only x-rated pieces are in the final room downstairs, but they’re so x-rated we believe they would be illegal if they were on a popular local blog rather than in an art gallery, so here’s a silver train instead:

Entry is free and the gallery was buzzing but not excessively full during our weekend visit.

Naturally the gallery shop stocks some Koons ~~expensive tat~~ art:

Welcome to Kennington Jeff – we haven’t been this excited since the two Kevins, Pietersen and Spacey, came to town.

Sidsel Meineche Hansen: SECOND SEX WAR at Gasworks

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

We rather like visiting Gasworks since their refurb. It’s a lovely building, open on the weekend which suits us, and we’re generally the only visitors.

The current exhibition won’t be to everyone’s taste, and is definitely not suitable for children. SECOND SEX WAR is a solo exhibition by London-based artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen, which “explores the commodity status of 3D bodies in X-rated digital image production, while also reflecting on the artist’s working conditions and relationships”.

The exhibition provides a chance to try an Occulus virtual reality headset, showing a CGI animation called DICKGIRL 3D, or you can watch it on a flat screen TV hung from a “DIY BDSM” structure:

There’s also a CGI animation called No Right Way 2 Cum, a feminist ‘cum shot’ video, which features EVA v3.0, a stock 3D model made for computer games and adult entertainment. This was made in response to the British Board of Film Classification’s recent ban on female ejaculation in UK-produced pornography. We don’t want an X certificate on this blog, so here’s a huge clay relief instead, called Cultural Capital Cooperative Object:

We think these laser cut drawing are called iSlave (non-dualistic) and Wannabe Dickgirl:

During our visit there was something going on in another room at Gasworks marked “participatory” or some such, but we were too scared to enter.

SECOND SEX WAR was commissioned by Gasworks in partnership with Trondheim’s kunstmuseum, which seems appropriate. It runs until May 29th at Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH.

Opening times: Wed–Sun 12–6pm or by appointment.

Foam Talent – Shaping the Future of Contemporary Photography – exhibition at Beaconsfield

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

Foam Talent is the best exhibition we’ve seen at Beaconsfield and on our visit, it was also the busiest we’ve seen the gallery. It’s possible some of those in attendance came looking for Newport Street Gallery and found it closed (they’re currently ‘all mouths on nozzle’ to set up their Jeff Koons exhibition), but they seemed to be enjoying Beaconsfield all the same.

Detail from photo by Belgium’s Tom Callemin

Foam Fotografiemuseum is Amsterdam’s leading photography museum. Every year they do a talent call, receiving entries from all around the world, and this exhibition comprises over 100 photos from their 21 favourite entrants, all aged under 35.

detail of photo by Russia’s Danila Tkachenko

This is a photo of some bubblegum, believe it or not:

detail from photo by Hungary’s Marton Perlaki

The only Brit in the 21 is Dominic Hawgood, whose photos were inspired by healings and exorcisms in African churches in London (quite likely on or just off the Old Kent Road):

from Under The Influence by Dominic Hawgood

Foam Talent runs until May 22nd 2016, Wednesday–Sunday 11am–5pm, at Beaconsfield, 22 Newport Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11 6AY. Be sure to sample some delicious cake from Ragged Canteen while you’re there.

Apologies to any photographer who didn’t want an iPhone photo of their work online – get in touch if you’d like it taken down.

Burger Craft Diner at The Steam Engine

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

You could live in Kennington for many years and not know where The Steam Engine pub is (we know because one of us did) – Cosser Street, behind the Days Inn Hotel, is not the kind of location that gets much passing trade. It was only thanks to a tweet from @Faye_W that we discovered the pub had been refurbished and Burger Craft were now providing the food.

This is their Cheesy One burger for the reasonable price of £8, living up to its description, and to Burger Craft’s promise to serve the juiciest burgers around. For us, this was better than Dirty Burger and therefore the best burger in Kennington.

One quibble – the chips were too salty. Why do restaurants do that? If we wanted loads of salt on our chips we could add it ourselves.

We also tried to order the Pleasured by Veg burger but they were out of caramelised garden vegetable patties, so we had to settle for a very tasty portion of mac & cheese.

This is the kitchen:

The renovation is another one on the theme of “looking like someone’s living room”:

There was a good selection of real ales, both on tap and in bottles, a cheap wine list, and a warm cider option:

They also have a beer garden if that’s not stretching the meaning of “garden” too far:

Burger Craft is open every day from midday to 10pm, and the pub stays open till midnight every night, or 1am on Fridays and Saturdays. They also have a hostel on site.

Address: 41-42 Cosser St, London SE1 7BU

Sugar Pot – NEW CAFE ALERT!

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Kennington Runoff

Kennington Park Parade is taking over from the stuttering Windmill Row to become Kennington’s latest hot spot for shopping. First QueArts opened up there, and now, in the former premises of Peter’s Shoe Design Studio, there’s Sugar Pot, a brand new, rather lovely cafe that’s already doing great business, especially when the sun comes out:

Sugar Pot is run by a local family and many of the clientèle seem to be their friends – or perhaps they’re just good at befriending their customers. Either way, everyone is very friendly, staff and customers.

n.b. If you weren’t aware, San Pellegrino is very salty.

Their menu is getting steadily longer. So far it doesn’t include fresh juices or smoothies but watch this space. The bread is by… who else but the wonderful Kennington Baker.

We had the banana bread (they’re right, it is lovely warmed with butter), and a fresh mint tea served in vintage crockery. The daffodils came with the table:

So far they’re not open on Sundays but we hope that will change in the future – it’s the kind of place we’d like to visit on a Sunday.

Address: 248 Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4DA

If you’re thinking of opening a shop in Kennington, it’s not too late to jump on the Kennington Park Parade bandwagon – these premises are to let a few doors down from The Sugar Pot:

The Kennington Observer (formerly Kennington Runoff)

Surreptitiously observing Kennington, including the suburbs Vauxhall, Oval, Walworth, and Elephant since 2012