Positives: Some of the best pub food around, cooked by Prince Charles’s former chef. Great, hand cut chips. Get in quick before the hordes discover it.
Negatives: If you’re looking for a light bite, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is their fish pie for two:
Hygiene rating: TBC
Address: 63 Sancroft Street, London SE11 5UG
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 1.
Positives: Everyone should go to The Lobster Pot at least once. The lobster is sensational, and so is the nautical-themed decor:
Negatives: Last year’s winner has slipped to no. 3 this year because it’s not the kind of restaurants we feel drawn to time and time again – it’s pricey (mains start at £20.50), and you do have to be in the right mood. Also, the use of inverted commas in this advert:
Address: 3 Kennington Lane, London SE11 4RG
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 2.
Fête season is upon us.
Today from noon till 4pm is the mother of all fêtes, the Kennington Village Fête. This takes place in Cleaver Square, or St Anselm’s Church if it’s raining, which it won’t be – the sun always shines on the Kennington Village Fête – the Friends of Durning Library see to that.
We will be there, doing a supermarket sweep past the local honey stand, staring in fascination at the human fruit machine, and keeping a low profile around Kennington Tandoori.
Then on Saturday June 27th, the North Lambeth Parish Fête takes place from 12.30pm to 5pm at Lambeth Palace – another opportunity to visit their grounds. We are fully expecting The Archbishop of Canterbury to set up his own human fruit machine.
North Kennington’s beautiful West Square has a fête, AKA a summer afternoon, on July 4th:
If there are any other fêtes we’ve missed (perhaps something in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens?), please leave a comment below or email kenningtonrunoff@gmail.com
Update: i’klectik remains open as an arts and events space with a bar serving drinks and snacks, but they no longer serve meals from the kitchen
At the centre of Old Paradise Yard is i’klectik, an “art lab” and cafe that hosts everything from free jazz to life drawing to visual art shows to DJs, along with tasty vegetarian food. They have a friendly vibe, and a great building, so forgive them their cringeworthy name and get along there.
We went along for the weekend veggie brunch, served from 11am-4pm, accompanied by a DJ playing funk classics:
The menu is short but good, and there are plenty of snacks, teas and beers to choose from, as you can see here:
This is their root veggie, millet and seeds burger with roasted sweet potatoes and coleslaw. Yes, we got overexcited again and started eating before taking the photo:
It wasn’t on the menu when we visited but this veggie rainbow tart they posted on Twitter looks amazing:
It’s a nice bright space with high ceilings, and a diverse clientele:
Some of the food is grown on site and you can taste the freshness:
They’re open Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm and Saturday and Sunday 10am to 6pm, unless there’s an event on, in which case they stay open until 10.30pm.
Their website is not up to date so head to their Twitter or Facebook for more info.
Old Paradise Yard is at 20 Carlisle Lane, SE1 7LG, on the north side of Archibishop’s Park, yards from St Thomas’s Hospital.
Positives: It’s Mauritian – how many other Mauritian restaurants/tea rooms/showrooms are there around? The two founders are very friendly and put a lot of love and care into their Mauritian comfort food cooking, which is as tasty as that description sounds. It’s BYOB and cheap. There are more and more food places moving into Artworks but Marcel & Sons were trailblazers who are steadily getting more popular as word gets around. Plus you can pick up some artisan jewellery and a t-shirt while you’re there. See here for more info.
Negatives: Marcel & Sons is not so much a restaurant as a canteen in a shipping container where you eat surrounded by boutique products, so don’t go expecting formal dining. They close around 9pm, and at the time of writing they don’t open on Mondays, although they plan to start doing so soon to try out new dishes.
Address: 17b The Artworks, Elephant Road, London SE17 1LB
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 3.
If you Google the Royal Oak Kennington, this pub at the West Kennington end of Kennington Lane will come up top. But there is another Royal Oak, at 78 Fitzalan Street. An earlier Kennington blog wrote about it here. Google suggests this is now a jewellery manufacture and repair business.
Then we saw this intriguing poster:
So we went along to what we thought might be a vintage sale in a derelict pub, perhaps squatted. We couldn’t quite believe our eyes.
In many ways it is a derelict pub – you feel the old wooden floorboards might collapse beneath your feet – but imagine a derelict pub if Tim Burton’s set designer had got hold of it:
We think we spotted TV’s Mark Hill, who we suspect has a lot to do with the look of Counter. He was trying to purchase various items, only to be told by the female proprietor “Oh no, my husband will never sell that.”
We got talking to a regular, who informed us the Royal Oak is still a pub, and they had recently started serving food. We asked what kind of food and her description sounded like small plates.
We’ve also managed to track down a Facebook page for Oxymoron at the Royal Oak. From this we have learnt that they opened on Feb 27th, were planning to serve Kernel, and they were serving food on April 13th, They even have a 5 star hygiene rating, reassuringly showing that food standards officers don’t care about creaky floorboards.
If our curiosity needed piquing any further, there were these two reviews:
“Doubt you will find a place like this anywhere in London, ask if the silver fox is there to cook you supper and if you turn up on the right night you may get the chance to see Henry and the Hooray’s play. #hiddengem” – Freddie Scott
“One of the very few undiscover
It sounds like the pub we have been waiting for all our lives.
Taking Adam’s advice, we went back to the Royal Oak on a Saturday afternoon. There were about seven people there, who looked like they’d been drinking there for decades. We asked the lady behind the bar if they serve food and she recommended trying The Ship.
Dear Oxymoron at the Royal Oak, please get in touch and tell us when you are serving food and Kernel so we can tell Kennington!
Update, November 2015: They are now serving food regularly on Friday, Saturdays and Sundays. More info from Facebook or Twitter.
Sadly Counter closed down in June 2017. Let’s hope they reopen.
Positives: Great food at brunch, lunch and dinner. Friendly service. There’s always a nice buzz in this huge new restaurant right next to Vauxhall station, plus live music and art. And, uniquely for a Kennington restaurant, Counter is almost always open (Monday to Thursday 7am to 12.30am, Friday 7am to 1.30am, Saturday 8am to 1.30am and Sunday 8am to 12.30am).
Negatives: Their aesthetic is esoteric – they served us coq au vin in an awkward shaped bowl which was worthy of We Want Plates. We’ve had various minor issues with service including the “lunch rapide” taking forever to arrive, but it’s nothing you wouldn’t expect from a busy, large-scale new opening, and we’re confident all this will be resolved before long – they seem like they care a lot.
Hygiene rating: TBC.
Address: Arch 50, 7-11 South Lambeth Place, London SW8 1SP.
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 4.
Positives: Eritrean food is delicious, unique and great fun for parties. We’ve been to a lot of Ertitrean and Ethiopian restaurants and Adulis might be the best of the lot.
Negatives: Occasionally sketchy, but friendly, service. The coffee ceremony basically involves burning the beans – that’s the Eritrean way – and will keep you awake for a week or so. And the food, although delicious, ain’t photogenic:
Address: 44-46 Brixton Road, London SW9 6BT.
Come back next Sunday to find out the number 5.
Positives: It’s cheap and BYOB. All the food is vegetarian and freshly cooked that day. The atmosphere is invariably great. There is often live music. It’s situated just off Bonnington Square, the most unique and vibrant of London’s residential squares, which, like Bonnington Cafe, has its roots in the squatting movement. There’s nowhere else like it.
Negatives: The quality of the food depends on which of the many volunteer chefs is cooking that night, and the service can be somewhat emotional, but it’s all part of the fun of the place. It’s cash only and you should call the chef to book a table – the rota is on their website.
Address: 11 Vauxhall Grove, London SW8 1TD
Come back next Sunday to find out the number six.
Indie rock heroes The Maccabees have many ties with North Kennington – some of the band live locally and they rehearse and record in a studio there (formerly owned by The Jesus & Mary Chain).
Now they’ve shot their new video Marks To Prove It in North Kennington – the spectacular view of the North roundabout you can see below is shot from everyone’s favourite modernist Kennington tower block Perronet House. They got there in the nick of time, just before the roundabout was besieged by roadworks:
