restaurants

Bistro Union

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40 Abbeville Road

London SW4 9NG

020 70426400

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We have visited Bistro Union a couple of times before our Sunday visit and always decided that the cost was above a general trip out on a weekday so haven’t reviewed it here. But now they do a Sunday Supper menu at £28.00 per person – an absolute bargain for the food you get. Visit soon – booking is definitely required.

This is a sister restaurant to Trinity in Clapham Old Town which is seriously good and seriously expensive – but you are in for a treat whenever you visit. Back to Bistro Union. During the week they serve a choice of snacks, small and large plates as well as some to share. On Sunday for lunch it is similar but with a roast. Sunday supper is a fixed menu – blessed relief not to have to choose – and when we visited there were three courses and an optional one. Snacks were cheese goujons – light an fluffy. An optional course – a tomato salad with fragrant dressing that we chose and shared. The main course was a deconstructed Caesar salad – the salad plus four pieces of chicken and the desert a berry pavlova that was more like an Eton mess when it arrived but no problem – we wolfed it down.

We were a party of three with a mother who is hard to please. So we took no photos, just in case. But we hit the jackpot with her thumbs up. The chicken skin was seasoned really well and the salad just crispy enough. We had a piece of chicken left over which was immediately wrapped for us to take away for a further supper the next day.

Wine comes in carafes as well as bottles and is a bit more expensive than your local – but that’s because it is really good. Not drinking too much before the hurly burly of Monday was also a blessing – as we were not tempted to dive into more than a glass and a half.

We will definitely go back for another go as the menus change.

Chip Shop

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Address: 378 Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8LF  (on the corner with Atlantic Road)

tel: +44 (0) 207 2743350

email: info@chipshopbxtn.co.uk

website: http://www.chipshopbxtn.com/

Friday night is always busy in Brixton, despite the move to Thursday celebrations – but we are old fashioned enough to think that Friday means fish and chips. We re-visited an old haunt that we refer to the hip hop chip shop on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road – our last review is here. This was busy (we hadn’t booked), but they squeezed us in – literally to two seats near the bar. But although we hankered after something from the sea, we were to be disappointed. Their order has not arrived, so we were left with the mostly meat options. Just to wet your appetite prawns, fish fingers and battered cod are on the menu.

We chose from the extensive wings menu – wings in two sizes and a sauce – lots of sauces. We had sweet chili and orange glaze (RZA) and it was a bit too sweet for our taste so next time we might have ODB (bourbon barbecue) or Henny hot (Henessey infused). We are assuming that all the alcohol has burnt off. But despite the sweetness the wings we fat and juicy and sticky – we were given warm water with lemon to take care of that as it never comes off with a paper napkin.

We also chose a Red Man burger (buttermilk chicken with a spiced Mac sauce, red cabbage, red onion, scotch bonnet chilli and coriander slaw). We were a bit doubtful about the scotch bonnet hiding all the flavour, but we had nothing to worry about. We got an occasional hit and there was more in the middle but that was fine as we had built up our tolerance. This was a great crunchy, chicken and several of our veggie portions. We also needed the water and lemon for this too.

We were very hungry so we went out on a limb and ordered loaded chips. As you can see they really were loaded (Bacon, House made Nacho cheese (???), Diced tomato, spring onion & coriander). To be honest we could have done without the cheese. But these were “real” chips, crispy and altogether delicious with the addition of everything. Again the tomato cut any greasiness and we had yet another daily portion of fruit (well a tomato is a fruit).

Finally we saw that they had deep fried snicker bar and salted caramel ice cream so we had one to share. The Snickers (why did they rename it) is runny and you get all the crunch of the peanuts while the delicious ice cream cools all of it down. We were full by the end.

We washed (and I mean washed) all the food down with a pint and a half of German lager and a half of Brixton IPA.

The service was slow and so we had time to share dishes but they were full so we are forgiving. We also got some money knocked off the bill for that and we didn’t mind watching the crowd while we waited. The bill came to £50.50 but we had a £3.00 reduction. Service isn’t included. We will visit again but will make sure they have had their fish order.

Franco Manca

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Address: 20 Atlantic Road, SW9 8JA

Phone: 0207 738 3021

Website: https://www.francomanca.co.uk/restaurants/brixton/

Previous eat in review link – more than 10 years ago! Franco Manca has moved from its original small place that we often packed with a queue at weekends. It is now on Atlantic road in a big site that has seen several restaurants come and go. Brixton long-timers will know it as ‘The Railway’ or even as ‘Brady’s’. Inside it has a relatively small but bright room near the entrance with table and bar-type seating, but go up the stairs and on the left is a very large room that would be great for a pizza party – we noticed one going on when we visited.

We are very fond of Franca Manca, having been regular users back when it was Franco’s and only open during the day and then not on Wednesdays because of half-day closing! The current list of pizza’s has not been much revamped but changes with the seasons. They use sourdough with a starter they can trace to the 18th century – presumably via the original Franco. The dough is allowed to rise for 24 hours before they make the pizza then it is flashed in the incredibly hot oven for a really short time.

Of course there are pizza’s but there are also pre-pizza (olives, meat, salad stuff to share and small plates of aubergine parmigiana or cheesy stuff with meat). Salads to eat with or without a pizza – too many to describe and bread and dips. There is also post-pizza with affogato, tiramisu and other sweet treats. We were here for the pizza – was it as good as usual or was it becoming too speedy.

We chose a Napoletana and a spicy salami pizza (a sort of American hot).

The pizza below is the spicy salami one that had “lightly smoked beechwood spicy salami, organic tomato, mozzarella, caramelised red onions, homemade Franco’s chilli oil & fresh basil”. Not as hot as an American hot but the chili oil had a kick and the caramelised onions and cheese mellowed it all out.

The Napoletana had organic tomato, garlic, oregano, capers from Salina, Kalamata black olives, Cantabrian anchovies & mozzarella. This was delicious but a little more cooking would have made the dough even better.

We saw people taking pizza home but we finished the whole lot so had not space for post-pizza. We washed it all down with no logo craft lager and a glass of Montepulciana.

The bill came to £36.75 plus 10% service charge which is a lot less than most restaurants charge these days. The food only came to £22 so if you drink water this is a very reasonable place to eat. We were also full, so couldn’t squeeze in another bite. If you want to run through the menu then come with friends and only order a few pizzas so you can try the pre- and post-pizza specialties.