On Sunday we will begin our countdown of the top ten restaurants in Kennington – and we’re looking for your input which we will ignore before compiling the list ourselves.
So don’t hesitate, leave a comment here or email your favourites to kenningtonrunoff@gmail.com
If you’re looking for inspiration, try here.
n.b. Dragon Castle is ineligible for this poll – don’t ask why, but there’s a clue here.
The second series of the TV drama that took Kevin Spacey away from Kennington is out now on Netflix.
We’ve watched some of it already – it’s just as good as season one, but the bit where Francis murders the president is way OTT.
Kennington residents can get a free trial of Netflix here.
Valentine’s Day: a purely commercial construct designed to entice otherwise sensible individuals to shell out on teddies and red foil balloons, yes, but when have we ever been ones to kill a romantic notion?
If you’ve still not made a grand gesture, Sally White may have some of their Jammy Dodger love hearts left:
(photo credit @WHITECAFESally)
You’ve left it too late to go to the West Kennington Village’s cinema pop-up The Tunnel of Love tonight (all sold out I’m afraid), but you can still get tickets for Moonrise Kingdom and Lost In Translation tomorrow, screened in a disused railway arch by Vauxhall Station. They’ve laid on a champagne cocktail bar, Rococo chocolates stand and a flower stall so that you can lay it on thick with your date in the hope that they won’t moan too much about celebrating Valentine’s Day a little later than expected.
(Tunnel of Love photo credit @vickybattcock)
If that leaves you feeling a bit icky, head next door to Fire, and blast yourself to Oblivion at their Vagabondz Valentine’s Party.
Lambeth Walk was immortalised in a music hall song from 1937. When the song was written, 159 shops lined the street and catered for every need, including eleven butchers, two eel and pie shops (one with a tank of live eels outside), a bird dealer and a tripe dresser. To read about the history of the street, go here or to this site which has some great old photos and maps, dating back to a time when it was surrounded by fields.
While the street declined in the second half of the last century, it’s on its way up again, along with the rest of North West Kennington, with lots of cool, creative businesses opening up nearby such as architects, a violin maker, a poetry school, pop up bars, and of course Damien Hirst’s new gallery coming soon.
Here’s the former Pelham Mission Hall, now the Henry Moore Sculpture Studio which is part of Morley (adult education) College:
On the left of the photo, on the first floor, you can see the outdoor pulpit, once used to offer two-for-one perfumes to the market-goers below in exchange for their attendance at church.
(Incidentally, there’s a Henry Moore sculpture on display close to Kennington, in the middle of the Brandon Estate.)
Lambeth Walk’s other great surviving building is the former Lambeth Baths, which since 1971 has been the Lambeth Walk Group Practice award winning GP surgery (who knew that there were awards for GP surgeries?):
There are a surprising number of Eritrean restaurants in London. Adulis is one of the longest established, having been in South Kennington since 1996, and probably the best (also check out Kifto House, just outside the borders of West Kennington on South Lambeth Road).
Eritean food is really tasty and fun. It’s all about the injera – leavened pancakes made with sourdough of teff flour, which is a grain grown in Ethiopia and Eritrea that’s gluten free and nutritious. Your food will come served on a giant injera, and you’ll get a separate bowl of rolled up injera which you’ll use instead of cutlery to scoop up the food. Order the vegetable or meat platter, or a mix of the two, and you’ll get a variety of delicious stews, including goat and boiled egg. It makes for an unusual and enjoyable communal eating experience that’s great for parties – the atmosphere in Adulis is always good. The only snag is it’s arguably the world’s least photogenic cuisine:
Eritrea does have one brand of beer – it’s called Gold Star – but in South Kennington you will have to settle for Tusker Lager which is from Kenya and annoyingly owned by Diageo:
After dinner comes the coffee ceremony, which begins with heavily roasted coffee beans being waved in front of you so you can absorb the aroma. These will then be ground, placed in a traditional clay vessel, boiled several times, and served with popcorn, accompanied by the smell of burning frankincense.
After the coffee ceremony comes hour after hour of caffeine-induced mania (that must be what the early morning clubbers of West Kennington have been drinking).
The final stop on our tour of Bonnington Square is one of West Kennington’s finest and most important shops. It was a Turkish shopkeeper whose legal action saved Bonnington Square from demolition in the late 1970s. Since 2008, those same shop premises have been occupied by Italo Deli which has also had a big part to play in the flourishing of Bonnington Square.
The deli is run by Luigi di Lieto, formerly of Di Lieto’s bakery and shop, and Charlie Boxer. Charlie is the son of food writer Arabella and father of Jackson (Brunswick House Café) and Frank (Frank’s Campari Bar in Peckham). Just don’t mention the errant son who’s the fruit and veg buyer for Tesco.
If you shop at Borough Market or Whole Foods, you will recognise some of Italo Deli’s products but hopefully not the prices – Charlie told The Independent “I have a very strong dislike of expensive food shops and that whole Borough Market thing – the effect where quality translates into high prices and exclusivity. People can feel excluded from the food revolution going on.”
Kennington Runoff’s favourite beer is Kernel, brewed at one of the first London craft breweries in nearby Bermondsey. We’re a little obsessed with it, especially the Amarillo Pale Ale. Italo Deli is the Kennington area’s only stockist of Kernel (although Greensmith’s on nearby Lower Marsh also have it).
Italo also sell a good range of fresh seasonal vegetables, some grown by residents of the square.
Some, but not all, of what they sell is Italian, including homemade fresh ravioli, and they do hot food at lunchtimes.
Tommy Adams and Jamie Berger, the founders of Pitt Cue Co, met at Bonnington Café then worked together at Italo Deli, and Chantal Coady, founder of Rococo Chocolates, is a big fan (and long-time Bonnington resident).
The place is beautiful, like an old village shop, which makes the abysmal aesthetics of their website all the more surprising. Their Twitter feed is pretty good though, and they like the Flying Burrito Brothers so they’re alright by us.
Bonnington Cafe has been a mainstay of Bonnington Square since the squatters moved in in the early 1980s. At that time, many of the houses didn’t have functioning kitchens, so members of the community took turns to cook for each other in the communal cafe, using ingredients either bought from or scavenged from the nearby Covent Garden food market.
The cafe still operates in this way, run as a co-operative, with a different chef cooking every day, but it’s now open the wider public as well, and it’s a truly magical place to spend an evening. Needless to say, the food can be a little hit and miss depending who’s cooking, and there are generally just two choices of starter, main course, and dessert, all vegetarian and some vegan. But the food is cheap, it’s BYOB with no corkage charge, and the atmosphere is invariably great, with candles, occasional live music, a wood fire on cold nights, and above all, a real sense of community (the cafe doubles as a community centre). Just don’t ask for the “special stuff”.
Here’s a video about the Bonnington Square squatters, including plenty about the cafe (thanks to @taxbod for the link):
West Kennington has not one but two lovely community gardens. Harleyford Road Community Garden is adjacent to Bonnington Square, on what was wasteland until 1984 when the community once again stepped in and turned it into something beautiful. They are remarkably peaceful and lush considering their location. Keep an eye out for the invisible waterwheel.
More photos and information on the South Kennington Partnership website.
Kenneth Clarke is one of many politicians who live in Kennington, and squatters visited his home in 2011 when, as justice secretary, he was responsible for removing the 700 year old right to shelter in unoccupied residential buildings (we got that fact from the guy in the video; who knows if it’s true?). See the video here.
Squatting in commercial premises remains legal and squatters briefly occupied The Duchy Arms, a former pub at the top of Ken’s road Courtenay Street, in 2013, turning it into a community centre.
Fathers for Justice also staged a protest at Ken’s house once. It’s like the Trafalgar Square of Kennington. We might head down there ourselves for a dirty protest if no-one does anything about the dog poo on Kennington Road.
Imagine if a community took over an abandoned square and restored its houses and communal areas to their former glory, planted mimosa, beech and mulberry trees, lavender, vines, ferns and palms where there had been a derelict playground, and turned the whole square into an oasis of peace and beauty. Imagine they started a café and community centre where volunteers fed the residents vegan food while they rebuilt the kitchens in their derelict homes. Then imagine one of London’s finest delis and cafes opened on the square. Imagine no longer – this is Bonnington Square in West Kennington, a magical, tranquil yet vibrant area, just yards from the noise of the Vauxhall gyratory. The only thing you might have to imagine is the part where Coalition politicians make the short walk from Parliament to Bonnington Square, then have an epiphany about the positive side of squatting.
The square was built in the 1870s, and was earmarked for demolition in the late 1970s, until squatters moved in. This video from The Guardian’s website tells the story of the remarkable work the squatters carried out.
Here’s the community garden in the middle of the square, dubbed Bonnington Square Pleasure Garden in honour of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens:
Not bad for a former WWII bomb site. Channel 4 gardener Dan Pearson was amongst the residents responsible for it.
In 1998 the squats were legitimised when the housing cooperative the squatters had formed was allowed to purchase the buildings. Nowadays Bonnington Square is one of the most desireable addresses in London thanks to its beautiful houses and gardens, its location, the Bonnington Cafe, and Italo Deli. Oh, and there’s a ley line running directly through the square, which also takes in Brunswick House, Sally White and lane seven of the Palace Bowl in Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre.
Bee Ridgway writes evocatively about her time staying on Bonnington Square here.
