CheeMc, Walworth Road

With deep and heartfelt apologies to those who call the area their home, there aren't too many convincing arguments to visit Walworth Road of an evening unless you have a particular fondness for betting shops, nail bars and standing traffic. Caught in a bit of a no-mans-land between the heaving Elephant & Castle roundabout (more recently less of a roundabout than a strange C-shape, but still heaving) and the genuinely enticing restaurant options of Camberwell, it's more of a conduit than an area, and up until quite recently its most significant impact on my life has been making me late for dinner at Silk Road. And I really do not like being late for dinner.

But, the merest hints of a dynamic food culture are flickering into life. As with so many (for want of a better word) unlovely areas of town, rents tend to be lower and with the freedom to be a bit more experimentational with your concepts and not worry too much about paying large investors back, London's restaurateurs can spread their wings a bit. True, Louie Louie wasn't quite my cup of tea in the end, but I like the fact that it's there, an okonomiyaki restaurant in South London, because why the hell not, a pleasing example that there are some people out there taking risks.

I wish I could tell you that I had a more successful evening at CheeMc than at Louie Louie, that I'd finally found my Korean chicken nirvana and that Walworth Road finally deserves to be spoken about in the same breadth as Camberwell Church Street or Brixton's Market Row. Sadly, we're not quite there yet, but it's still heartening to see a quirky, independent little operation like CheeMc pack them in on a rainy Sunday evening even if, in my usual tedious way, I could still find fault with a lot of the food served.

Partly my gripes were with the menu, which was large to the point of overwhelming and included a rather geographically ambiguous mix of Japanese staples like ramen, katsu, udon and takoyaki as well as Korean classics like bibimbab and soondooboo jigae. Had the food which appeared been better, I could have overlooked the game attempts to be Jack of all trades, but once a rather lacklustre bowl of udon ramen appeared, tasting of packet stock and raw onions, it quickly looked a lot less like idiosyncrasy and a lot more like an identity crisis.

Japche glass noodles were better, containing nice fresh vegetables and a confident hand with the sesame oil, and were pretty easy to enjoy in a straightforward kind of way. £7.90 does seem like quite a lot to pay for a some stir-fried vegetables and noodles, though. I could have them delivered to the door for that from a few places on Just Eat.

Bibimbab was good. Not astonishing, but good. More interesting once doused with gochujang, certainly, and there wasn't really anything significantly wrong with it, it just did its job as much as as a bowl of rice with various bits of veg on top can do.

The only real disappointment was the chicken. I don't pretend to be any kind of expert, on this or anything else, but I've had good Korean fried chicken, and I've had bad, and this was not good. Poorly butchered, in fact hacked into a strange collection of misshapen bits of pieces with broken bones jutting out at ugly angles, they were no less upsetting to eat than look at, being overcooked and tough, and coated in a chilli sauce that tasted of nothing much more than dry chilli powder. We soon wished we'd ordered a half portion instead of a full (£18.90), but even that would have been far too much to pay for a fairly mediocre pile of wings. Even an included bowl of sweet pickled daikon couldn't make this value for money.

With a drink each, the bill came to £16.31/head, great if your life's ambition is to eat vegetable noodles and poor fried chicken, not so great if it isn't. And I'm very much in the latter camp, so it seems my search for the Best of Korea goes on. Perhaps I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and travel all the way back to New Malden; if they can't get it right there then there's no hope for anyone. And for now, the Walworth Road will go back to its primary function of slowing me down on the way to dinner in Camberwell. If anything changes, though, you'll be the first to know.

5/10

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Louie Louie, Walworth Road

I should probably say up front, at the start of what will turn out to be a rather mediocre review, that of all the ultra-specialist Japanese restaurant types, I've always found okonomiyaki to be the least engaging. It's not that there's anthing particularly wrong about the combination of shredded cabbage, egg, bacon, mayonnaise and tamarind sauce (and whatever else you may find in there - okonomiyaki literally translating as "how you like"), it's just that I would seek my fill of kaiseki, yakitori, sushi, ramen, udon, soba and a few others, in that order, before I began to harbour a serious desire for cabbage omelette.

"But it's comforting, hangover food," I hear you say, "it's not supposed to be life-changing". Perhaps not. But it seems odd to me that Japan, a country that raises almost every aspect of eating out to an art form, would obsess (and they do obsess, based on the number of okonomiyaki joints I passed in Tokyo when I was there) on something so... well, ordinary.

It's also probably fair to say that to get the "full" okonomiyaki experience you need to be sitting around a hotplate with your dinner cooking in front of you - it's an interactive experience - and for various very sensible reasons this isn't possible at a popup in a café on Walworth Road. So, while the main events cooked backstage we got stuck into some starters, such as this very pleasant arrangement of pickled mushrooms and cucumber....

Fried lotus roots were greaseless and crisp, dressed in seaweed salt...

Japanese "tacos" were a bit wet and bland, but had a decent serving of fresh tuna so weren't a complete waste of time...

...and ssam short rib, Korean interlopers, had a lovely soft texture and plenty of flavour once paired with gochujang.

"Angry wings" were nice enough, certainly pretty heavy on the scotch bonnet, though could have done with a bit of a crisper skin. Also, rocket is the devil. But apart from that, fine.

After that, the okonomiyaki arrived. I have three photos here of the three different styles, but as you can tell, visually they weren't exactly distinctive so I'll leave you to decide which was which because I sure as hell have no idea myself. And it has to be said, they tasted pretty similar to eat too, despite one containing seafood, one involving beef & mustard, and one with pork and kimchi. This is probably largely to do with the fact that 90% of any okonomiyaki is egg and cabbage, dressed in mayo and tamarind sauce, and whatever else you add to the mix tends to get a bit lost. As I have mentioned, they were fine - not inedible, not wrong, just a bit underwhelming. And at £13/£14 a pop, not particularly good value either.

I should point out that by the time we left Louie Louie on that wet Thursday evening, every table in this attractive little space was taken, so there are clearly enough omelette fans in SE17 to make the numbers work - at least for now - and despite my own reservations, for this I'm glad. I may not have been bowled over myself, but anyone trying to do something a bit different, in an area of town that you'd usually only visit on the way to somewhere else, should be applauded. I doubt I'd be back, but if the idea of paying £12 for a cabbage omelette fills your heart with joy, well, you know where to go.

6/10

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

The Camberwell Arms, Camberwell

"Would you like to sit at the bar or at a table at the back? I should warn you, there are lots of children."

Claire Roberson, charmingly laid-back front of house at the Camberwell Arms, whom I first met when she was one half of the now sadly missed Mayfields in Hackney (though it's hard to be sad for too long when you realise its replacement is the exquisite Pidgin), knows that sitting amidst the bedlam of a family restaurant in South London on a bank holiday weekend is not to everyone's tastes. But this is the new reality of Camberwell in 2016, gentrified if not quite yet genteel, with its gastropubs and artisan pizza joints and buggy-friendly table spacings. A lot has changed in a very short space of time.

I would have quite happily sat at the bar, actually, were it not for the fact the lighting was slightly better at the back. Yes, I'm one of those people now, very much enjoying the novelty of my photos no longer looking like medical waste, and happy to make life for my dining companions even more difficult if there's a chance of getting a good Flickr album out of it. Plus the children seemed fairly well behaved anyway, so that's win-win as far as I was concerned.

As well as boasting favourable lighting conditions, the Camberwell Arms - you may have heard - also serves some excellent food. These sweetbreads for example, simply and confidently presented, lightly breadcrumbed and laid on top of a zingy wild garlic and hazelnut pesto. Sweetbreads (along with pigeon, and oysters) are one of my Must Order items when I see them on a menu, and I'm happy to say these stood up next to the best of them.

Even more exciting though was this courgette and yoghurt soup with brown butter, an unpromising label for a surprisingly leftfield dish. Thick and cheesy, studded with what I think were chunks of pickled courgettes, the best way I can describe it is to say it was a bit like eating a bowl of cheese and pickle sandwich soup. And I suppose whether you'd like it depends on how much you like cheese and pickle sandwiches. I happen to like cheese and pickle sandwiches a lot.

The smoky pieces of charcoal-roasted squid in this main course had two major things going for them. Firstly, they had all the textural benefits of being sensitively barbequed, with crunchy bits of thin tentacle and lovely large chunks of tender flesh. Secondly, they were all doused in a beautiful green coriander and almond sauce, which created a vaguely South Indian effect. Clever stuff, and a generous portion too.

Not being able to resist yet more offal, I asked for the "ox heart kebab" for a main, a clever take on the kind of thing top kebab merchants FM Mangal (just over the road) are famous for. Despite a couple of inedibly gristly spots in the heart, the rest of it was - like the squid - irresistably smoky from the grill, and the yoghurt and chilli sauces both did their jobs well. I should say the "fleatbread" was a bit soggy and scone-y for my liking, but still had a nice flavour. And it's always nice to see any kitchen trying something a bit risky.

Clearly we weren't going to end such a nice meal prematurely, and so on to desserts. The first was an Easter special, hot cross bun with Seville marmalade ice cream, a densely sticky and sugary bun containing near-perfect house ice cream.

And apricot jam ice cream was also very accomplished, not a trace of ice crystal and studded with chunks of jammy fruit. I always appreciate when places go to the effort of making their own ice cream - the results are invariably lovely.

"Invariably lovely", in fact, is quite a good way of describing Camberwell Arms as a whole. This grand old building is that rarest of things, a proper gastropub in the most traditional Eagle Farringdon sense of the word, just as happy to serve you a £3.90 pint of Brockley Pale Ale while you read the newspaper at the front bar, as wowing with a great value Mediterranean-British menu at the tables at the back. On top of all that, you can even reserve so you don't even have to worry about getting in line. Camberwell is very lucky to have its food, its service and its lovely diffuse sky-lighting. I highly recommend a visit, and bringing a camera.

8/10

The Camberwell Arms stands a very good chance of being in the next version of the app. But if you're in the area, see how remarkably diverse are Camberwell's dining options by using my app.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad