Peckham Rye – London

As we have recently relocated from East Dulwich back to Dublin, I thought I would do a few posts on our favourite London spots. So here’s the first one – our fave places in Peckham Rye, apparently THE up and coming area in London at the moment.

Our all time favourite spots include:

Peckham Refreshment Rooms 12-16 Blenheim Grove (around the corner from Peckham Rye overground station) do amazing modern European food in a casual and hip setting. They open throughout the day which means that its a favourite for some locals who hang out with their laptops. The menu is small but the dishes are consistently great and good value for the quality. After going there numerous times for dinner over the last year, we’ve been for brunch a few times recently and it has been equally epic. They do their breakfast menu every day, with a few additional items at the weekend when brunch runs until 3pm. The ingredients are top notch including our favourite Burford Brown eggs, amazing merguez sausages, Alsace bacon, all with their epic sourdough bread (they get their bread from Balthazar bakery in Covent Garden).

In fact, they try and use local suppliers for most of their ingredients including: ‘The Ham and Cheese Company’, ‘La Fromagerie’, ‘Field Morris and Verdin’, ‘ Coleman Coffee’ and ‘Blackwoods Cheese’.  Dinner-wise, starters include melted stinking bishop cheese on baby potatoes with cornichons, graceburn cheese and for mains they do great fish specials, bavette steak etc. Nom. Its also worth a trip there just for our favourite Whiskey Mac cocktail (no longer on the menu but they’ll do one up for you on request for £5) – amazing! Great place to catch up with friends.

Other places on Blenheim grove include Bar Story a few doors up, which does epic cocktails and good pizzas. Always buzzing, it is particularly good value during their happy hour (6-7 everyday) when there is 2-for-1 on cocktails and pizzas. Brick Brewery bar has their own microbrewery and do great craft beers. There is usually a food stall cooking up amazing smelling burgers out front too. Honest Burger opened up their Peckham branch in the last few months and it is as good as the others, if not better with its classy décor and open kitchen. They are one of the branches that do brunch also (not all of them do). We haven’t tried it yet but the menu is suitably mouth-watering for Honest! Serious Pig is also relatively new and we didn’t have a chance to try before we left but looks like it is right up our street, serving British charcuterie.

Up on Bellenden Road, our other favourite local restaurant is Artusi which opens for the more traditional lunch and dinner sitting times. Again, a small menu – usually 3 starter, 2 pasta (available in starter or main size), 3 secondi and 3 dessert options. This is proper Italian fare, like you would get in Italy. The pasta is freshly made and the focus is on great, fresh ingredients transformed into simple, well-executed dishes. The staff are always friendly and the restaurant always booked out. A testament to how great it is and again, excellent value for the standard of the food. Here’s some photos from them:

Other places around here include The Begging Bowl which is popular and always spoken highly of. We’ve been once and the food is great and a little different from the normal Asian fare e.g. rabbit curry, stir fry venison. We did think it was slightly overpriced at the time though for what we had. Perhaps it is because they jam people in a bit with sharing tables and benches. This makes for a casual and quick meal, which is maybe why we felt the prices a bit high for the experience. Ganapati a few corners up also serves up good South Indian food. Again, not overly cheap when compared to Indian restaurants such as Dishoom and Tayyabs elsewhere in London, but good quality food and a nice neighbourhood restaurant, eternally popular with the locals. Lovely House do great dim sum also. Cheap and cheerful, it doesn’t look much from the outside but the dim sum is next to none! For a drink afterwards, The Victoria Inn opens late-ish. Or if you fancy some top-notch ingredients and wine to bring home the General Store is always worth a browse.

Peckham is just jam-packed with great bars, cafes and restaurants and new spots opening all the time. Give these places a try and you won’t be disappointed!