Franzina Trattoria

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Address: 395 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, SW9 8LQ

Telephone: 07802 473444

Website: https://franzinatrattoria.com/

Open everyday from 12.30 pm to 11 pm: except Tuesday 6-11 pm

This is a new restaurant that has relocated from Brixton Pop. It is now a real restaurant, but in a venue that has not had a good run of restaurants. They have all been pretty good (Calcutta Street, The Phoenix, etc.) but all have found it taxing and have moved on or closed. This new incarnation has just opened and we wish them well. The new decor is stripped back but happily it is light and airy. We were so pleased not to be turning on our camera torches to read the menu. This is a Sicilian style trattoria serving small plates and homemade pasta to eat in or take away. It’s the sort of restaurant where you would find Montalbano chatting to the waitress and discussing all the ingredients of an arancini. Continue reading →

Khan’s of Brixton

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Address:  24 Brixton Water Lane, London SW2 1PE

Telephone: 020 7326 4460

Booking on the website too:  http://www.khansbrixton.co.uk/

Opening times: 5:00 pm to Midnight, every day

We have been here often, over the years, (see here, here and here). Previous reviews have commented on how few people there were, so we were suprised at how busy it was, even if it was a Friday night. Boy was it busy, so remember to book in advance. It was fully booked upstairs, so we had to have a table downstairs (who knew), with a very noisy party of 20 men. It was hard to make conversation, even with the person sitting at your side.

sympearThe staff are really helpful, warned us about the noise, fed us plenty of poppadoms on the house and got our food as quickly as possible. It does not have a license, so bring your own or buy around the corner. There’s several places to get your booze but we had met up at the relatively new craft beer place, The Sympathetic Ear, on Tulse Hill. (That’s opposite Sainsbury’s, for those worried that it might be at the West Norwood end.) So we all had cans of the excellent Peckham Pils.

We chose mainly from the Khan’s specials, highly recommended part of the menu. But there was a lot to choose from, with starters covering all the usual fare – meat and vegetable pakoras, puris and samosas, kebabs and obviously onion bhaji. We ordered some onion bhajiis to stave off the hunger pangs and for mains we went rogue with butter chicken, chicken korna, chicken tikka bhuna and murchi lamb accompanied by plain naan and pilau rice. Our dishes may not be quite hot enough for the Friday night hardened chilli eater, but they were just right for us.

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The butter chicken was really a bit of a wash out. Although the chicken was soft to eat there really was too little spice. The korma was a step up but in my view the bhuna was the best. The spice with the tomato and onion was a big step up and, although without too much heat, the dish was at least a few different textures. The lamb got a favourable reception as well – well cooked and not tough and gristly. The naan was hot and light and the rice was very well balanced – not too much salt or coriander but enough to detect.

The bill for four of us came to around £70, so it’s still good value. We will be back, but just not on a Friday night. For our Friday night curry fix we will probably just order the takeaway from their website.

Afandina,

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afandina01

Afandina Lebanese Cuisine
133 Stockwell Rd, SW9 9TN
020 7737 7577

https://afandinalebanesecusine.co.uk/

Opening hours: Noon to midnight, every day

This restaurant was Turkish last time we visited (see our review of Red Onion from 2015) but now is Lebanese serving Halal food. It is still incredibly large and we have never seen it full, so if you need somewhere to eat any day of the week (open midday to midnight) then this is the place for you. Alternatively it does takeaways and you can even stay at home and order a delivery. We were the only sitting customers at 7.30 on a Saturday night, but it was appalling weather. Also, maybe, because it is a little uninviting, with a vast space in the back, high ceilings everywhere, and relatively sparse decor on white walls. Cosy, it’s not, even with the fan heater they provided to help dry us out. But they have tried to soften it with real flowers on every table – ours was a lovely pink rose. Continue reading →

Roe

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Address: Unit S38, Pop Brixton, 49 Brixton Station Rd, SW9 8PQ

Website: https://www.popbrixton.org/members/roe/

Opening Times:
Monday – closed
Tuesday 5-10pm (last booking 9pm)
Wednesday 12-3pm (last booking 2.30pm) 5-10pm (last booking 9pm)
Thursday 12-3pm (last booking 2.30pm) 5-10pm (last booking 9pm)
Friday 12-3pm (last booking 2.30pm) 5-10pm (last booking 9.30pm)
Saturday Brunch 11-3pm /Lunch 12-3pm (last booking 2.30) 5-10pm (last booking 9.30pm)
Sunday Brunch 11-4pm/Lunch 12-4pm (last booking 3pm)

Online booking: https://www.resdiary.com/restaurant/roe

Email: info@popbrixton.org

This Pop Brixton venue has changed hands several times but has been fish restaurant the last two times. The painting of the fish on the ceiling is probably  some encouragement to stick to this theme. Eight place sittings on long tables mean that there is room for the waiting staff and it doesn’t feel crowded. Sit away from the door for a view of the open kitchen.

This is fish, fish and more fish. You can choose a la carte or just have the six dish tasting menu for £25. We were on a strict time limit, so we chose two dishes from the a la carte to share between us and a dessert each. The menu has 4 parts – starter sized dishes, small plates, mains and then desserts. Continue reading →

Craft Beer

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Beer02Locally brewed ‘craft’ beer is now definitely a thing and, seemingly, in danger of getting out of control. So in the interests of helping our readers make sense of what’s happening, two of us set out on a Saturday lunchtime to try what was on offer locally. We focused on the three breweries in Brixton of course, although you only need to go as far as Herne Hill to find further options.

So what we have are:

Clarkshaws – Arch 497 Ridgway Road, SW9 7EX, 079 8940 2687
https://www.clarkshaws.co.uk/index.html

Brixton Brewery – Arch 547 Brixton Station Rd, Brixton, SW9 8PF, 020 3609 8880
https://www.brixtonbrewery.com/

London Beer Lab, Arch 41 Nursery Road, London, SW9 8BP, 020 8396 6517
https://www.londonbeerlab.com/

Continue reading →

La Barra

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14e Market Row, London, SW9 8LD

https://www.instagram.com/labarralondon/

Open:
Fri: 1600 – 2200.
Sat: 1100 – 2200
Sun: 1200 – 2200

This taco restaurant and bar was taken over at short notice, done up on a shoestring, so you can see the leftovers of Rosie’s, which turned into a Persian cafe and is now La Barra. It opens for a short time – three days a week – and is still so hidden that on a Friday night the place was empty at 7.00pm. The service was friendly and, unsurprisingly given we were the only customers, prompt. Continue reading →

Fish and Chips supper – Where to buy

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We never know where to buy fish and chips, so we called a consensus meeting to rate four fish and chips shops around Brixton. Six people, with more than a hundred and fifty years of experience of fish and chip suppers, sat down to rate cod, chips and mushy peas each on a five point scale from the following outlets:

Brixton’s Cod 118 Acre Lane, Brixton SW2 5RA – Link

Chip Shop  378 Coldharbour Ln, Brixton SW9 8LF – Link

Fish Lounge 99 Brixton Hill, Brixton SW2 1AA – Link

Olley’s 65-69 Norwood Rd, Herne Hill SE24 9AA – Link

Continue reading →

blank. brixton

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blank01
144 Acre Lane Brixton SW25UT
email blankbrixton@gmail.com
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Blankbrixton/
Phone: 077 8860 2119
Open: 08:30 – 17:30

This a good local coffee shop with excellent light meals. Half way along Acre Lane, it’s a bit cramped but, so long as the weather permits, it spills out onto the pavement on the sunny side of the street. Obviously it serves coffee but there are sandwiches, closed and open, plus some brilliant cakes. It’s not part of a chain and is run by the owners, who are obviously enthusiasts and community minded. Continue reading →

Cattivo Hall

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207 Ferndale Road

020 096 2236

Website: https://www.cattivobar.com/

Email: bookings@cattivobar.com

Monday: Closed
Tues-Thurs: 12 noon to 12 midnight
Fri-Sat: 12 noon to 2am
Sun: 12 noon to 11pm

We usually give a new restaurant a few visits before reviewing, but this place caught our eye on a cold Friday night. They were in their “soft launch” phase – the whole kit and caboodle will be open tomorrow (Tuesday 16th October), when it will have a longer menu including desserts. It is part of the same chain as Canova Hall (link, link and link), which is just across the road. This is a restaurant and bar also but takes a slightly different approach to decor. Gone are the cosy banquettes and the French Bistro feel, but what is left is the same industrial style, with lots of room for standing and drinking. Downstairs (and yet to be explored) is a cocktail bar with its own Gin distillery.

But we visited for the food, although by way of a cocktail and glass of wine. Food on the menu was hearty, and with large proportions it will certainly line your stomach for the Friday night revelries and probably divert any potential hangover. Menus online seem to be more extensive, with some sharing plates.

The foreshortened menu consisted of spaghetti and meatballs (beef, spicy pork and ricotta), a vegan dish and some fried items including potatoes, squash, peas, parmesan fries and focaccia. We settled for spicy pork and ricotta meatballs, and although we thought about ordering a side dish, we were glad we hadn’t when we saw the size of the plates of pasta.

The spicy pork was spicy but not overpowering with some chili in the tomato sauce too. We missed the promised gremolata but liked the taste of the sicilian sausage.

The ricotta meatballs were much softer than the beef but equally tasty. We  missed the gremolata again and wondered what the ricotta salata was (advertised on the menu). We did have cheese and they didn’t offer any extra Parmesan. But I don’t think either of us minded.

We washed all this down with water and a glass of Primitivo and a Professore cocktail (Del Professore Madame gin, Kamm & Sons aperitif, Campari) – so a sort of Negroni with a large ice cube and we were glad to see the absence of a straw. A clever engineering touch was the shaved orange peel jammed into the side of the ice cube thus successfully preventing it from freezing your top lip during drinking. We would like to congratulate the barman (or woman) who invented this – patent it now.

We paid £42 including the drinks which were almost half the bill. We have another booking for Friday to try some of the other specialties on offer.

 

And our winner of Favourite Restaurant 2018 is …

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It’s finally time to reveal the results! After a few weeks of voting, narrowing down of the list, and the big push in the last week for our shortlist, we are happy to announce that Agile Rabbit has been voted the favourite restaurant in Brixton 2018 by our followers. Here’s a link to its website.

Well congratulations are due, although it’s many years since we last wrote about Agile Rabbit – it was actually 2012 – but you can still check out our review of the place here. Surprisingly current prices seem much the same. However, it did figure little more than a year ago in our comparative review of home delivery pizzas and came in as one of our two top scorers – see here.

Now one of the longest running eateries in Brixton Village, it’s notable for also selling slices of pizza, making it the go-to place for a lunchtime snack. There’s also weekly jazz sessions. A recent development is the opening of a second branch in Herne Hill, opposite the station. But there’s still a commitment to Brixton, which is regarded as the soul of the business.

When we found out it was the winner we decided it deserved another look. We are pleased to report that it is a worthy favourite. It’s not a place for fine dining of course, but if you want simple straight-forward pizzas, at a reasonable price, this is as good as any.

We chose, the Aoca – anchovies, olives, capers and aubergine and the other

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– almost inevitably – a Pepperoni. For me this had a bit too much cheese, but I guess for many this is not really a criticism.

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These are seriously good 12 inch pizzas, with the all-important crispy base, making it easy to eat by hand. We would have had enough each with just one,  but we were hungry, with eyes bigger than our stomachs. So the fridge has pieces destined for today’s lunch.

agile_rabbit04We washed the pizzas down with Brixton ale currently on draught. The total cost, including 10% service that we were assured all goes to the excellent staff, was under £30 (sorry, I’ve lost the receipt).