A short bus ride away

A short bus ride – Rock Steady Rum Lounge

~ eatinbrixton ~ Leave a comment

Address: 128 Gipsy Hill, London, SE19 1PL

Telephone: 020 8670 4030

Open For Dine in: Wednesday – Saturday 5pm – 10pm

Deliveries: Tuesday – Saturday 5pm – 10pm, Sunday: 4pm – 9pm

​website: https://www.rocksteadyrumlounge.com/

This is a restaurant next to Bull and Finch where you can get a pre-prandial beer or cocktail – even a good supply of no/low alcohol beer. But the small restaurant on Gypsy Hill is definitely good for a visit. With friendly staff and reasonable food. They have a thriving delivery service, but not many people in the dining room (in fact only the four of us and a couple who came in later). We will tell you now that we didn’t have any rum and, as we live in Brixton, we know how filling festivals are (sweet fried dumplings), so in the interest of trying several dishes we steered clear. We did share a starter but we now cannot remember what it was – the menu online was no help.

So what did we try – Brown Down chicken stew, Jerk Chicken and the fish Escovitch…….with sides of plantain and rice and peas. Totally too much so our advice is to ditch the extras unless you are only having the mains.

We liked the jerk chicken with its crispy skin (warning – it is fiery), and the Escovitch was delightful. We were a little disappointed in the Brown Down Stew as the chicken was a little dry, but the sauce was lovely. Despite not needing the plantain, it was very soft, slightly spiced and was definitely good next to the spicy sauces. The rice and peas was also really tasty.

We also ordered desserts but shared them – lemon tart and a chocolately thing. You don’t need them and they are not inspiring so we suggest going to town on the mains.

We drank beer and homemade lemonade for the designated driver (although you can catch the No. 3 or the 322).

A short bus ride away – Kudu

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address: 119 Queens Road, Peckham, London ​SE15 2EZ
Tel: 020 3950 0226
https://www.kudu-restaurant.com/

Peckham seems to be blooming at the moment, with new restaurants that spring up in unprepossessing line of shops. Kudu is no exception, amid cheap grocery stores and worldwide pay stores sits this little gem. South African inspired food but no South African inspired decor. Rather they have gone for small tables, stools at the bar and lots of wood. It’s open for lunch, brunch and dinner except for Mondays and Tuesdays. For our Wednesday business dinner we booked (OpenTable), and went straight from work. Later it gets very busy so booking is essential.

The main theme is barbecue and there is lots of flame from the open kitchen often looking like a game of chicken by the chefs – highest flame without singeing your eyebrows. The menu consists of snacks, small plates and medium plates and dessert (we never made it that far).

From the snack menu we chose Kudu bread with seafood butter (lots of tasty shrimps swimming in salty butter). The bread is light, slightly sweet and more like brioche. Fried artichokes with miso mayonnaise, which were not a favourite. As the artichokes cool down they become more difficult to eat as their crispiness disappears – be warned eat it all in one go.

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From the small plates we ordered onion and beer tarte tatin with goat’s curd, Pigs head tortellini, mushroom & hay broth, crispy onions and the Mussel potjie pot with seaweed gnocchi. A potjie means “small pot food” usually cooked outside on a braai (barbecue of some sort) and in our case was a small cast iron pot – it was definitely our favourite and I was glad we had saved some bread. But the tart also got a thumbs up, really sweet from the caramelised onions set off by the curd … oh no … I sound like Greg Wallace. The tortellini were tasty and the broth delicious – unfortunately I had run out of bread by this time.kudo06kudo05kudo04

Finally we ordered the Braai lamb neck, smoked yogurt, lettuce, sprouting broccoli from the medium plates menu. It was also lovely but I am channelling my inner Jay Rayner and will just say the plate was bare at the end of the meal.

There were six plates in all and they came at just the right speed, so we didn’t feel rushed and could draw breath and extra wine in between. The bill was £136.58 including two bottles of wine and service. It might seem a lot but the quality of the food was great and you could make it cheaper by drinking water! Wine, however, allowed a full and frank discussion of work issues.

A short bus ride away No 2 – Hood (Streatham)

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address: 67 Streatham Hill, London SW2 4TX

Tel: 0.0 36013320

website: hoodrestaurants.com

email: info@hoodrestaurants.com

Trying to find somewhere for a leisurely meal in Brixton is more difficult now so we set off with guests for a second visit to Hood – a crowdsourced restaurant in Streatham that we really enjoyed the first time (see here). We were not disappointed – it was as friendly as the first time. We won’t spend time describing the décor as it hasn’t changed. But we were glad to see that even on a Wednesday night they were full, so definitely book ahead. Continue reading →

A short bus ride away No 2 – Hood (Streatham)

~ eatinbrixton ~ Leave a comment

hood06

address: 67 Streatham Hill, London SW2 4TX

Tel: 0.0 36013320

website: hoodrestaurants.com

email: info@hoodrestaurants.com

This is a the second post in our new venture of writing about where to go for that special celebration, a birthday, anniversary or even wedding breakfast. But we still want to make it local and most are only a 20 minute walk from the middle of Brixton, or only a short bus ride if you have already done your 10,000 steps that day.

Hood is a family run restaurant that was crowd funded by family and friends. It serves modern British food from seasonal British ingredients. There is a provenance map on the wall of the restaurant so you can see where the food and drink comes from and it concentrates on very local. The clean and simple interior has matching tables and primary coloured chairs and we can attest to the comfort as we spent a good three hours sitting in them.

The short menu has 4 starters, 6 mains and three desserts and as we were a foursome we could try lots of them. Two of us chose kidneys and cauliflower with raisin and caper sauce which we decided were the best kidneys we had eaten ever. The others chose beetroot and horseradish cured salmon, buttermilk and rye and Crispy pork rillettes with apple, shallots and sage cream – both being delicious and, as you can see just by the description, really interesting with every bite and a pretty picture.

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For the main course we had pan fired sea bream with asparagus, roast rump of lamb with pea and wild garlic croquette and broad bean and feta relish and finally slow roast pork belly with bubble and squeak. We had an extra portion of new potatoes but they were not really needed. All were really good and every plate except mine was wiped clean. I liked every bite of the pork belly but the portion was just too much for my appetite.

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For dessert there was cheese but that seemed too hefty for any of us so we had the lemon posset with shortbread, a dark chocolate tart and strawberry snap, cackle and pop. The lemon possets were small delicate cream pots with a thin layer of strongly flavoured lemon jelly on top – just enough. The dark chocolate tart was slim and shiny and strong and slightly bitter – just as it should be. The strawberries were sandwiched between layers of Rice Krispies which were on top of marshmallow so very sweet and gooey.

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We started the meal with beer and wine. The list of beers is long with bottles from the Brixton Brewery, Partizan, Gypsy Hill Brewery and others. They come with their strength advertised which is important as some are 7.1%. We had a porter which tasted  – just like its description – of caramel, and a Pale Ale which was a good foil – a light and slightly bitter long drink. We interspersed our drinking with tap water  which was freely offered. We also had a French Malbec which was described as  having “a warming & smooth richness and well balanced” which it definitely was. With dessert there was a decaf Americano and a  glass of dessert wine.

We really enjoyed this meal. There was of course the good company but we could talk without having to shout and the waiting staff were helpful and didn’t push us out too quickly. The bill was celebration size (£180) but it was for four people with three courses, wine and sundries. We thought it was better than anything currently in Brixton and we would most certainly return for another celebration meal.