I absolutely love love LOVE L.O.V.E Brixton Village and I go there really quite a lot. Here's a photo of a curry I had on Friday night and here's a load of words Jay Rayner wrote about the market in the Observer. If you haven't been yet it's my No.1 recommendation of the year.
It was while I was eating the burger, the juices dribbling down my wrists, the scent of properly aged dead animal in my nostrils, that I realised I was being an idiot. A few months back I reviewed
Kaosarn, a stonking Thai restaurant in an old covered market a short walk from my home in Brixton, south London. I hesitated before writing that review because it seemed lazy to cover somewhere so close to home. I am accused often enough of metropolitan bias, and though I do pretty well on the out-of-London stakes I could see that writing about somewhere that was practically within the back end of my own postcode would just be throwing lighter fuel on to the smouldering embers of a row.
But I have spent more and more time at Brixton Village since that review and become increasingly convinced that it is the most exciting, radical venture on the British restaurant scene right now. I spend hours every week wading through dismal press releases about the latest glossy openings, each of which has left no change from a million or more. These are places with lighting concepts and colour waves and boards full of investment bankers, which really is just rhyming slang. They are built and designed from the front door in rather than the kitchen out.
Brixton Village, formerly Granville Arcade, is entirely different. It's a dozen or more
restaurants, most of which would have been opened for the price of a trip to Ikea. They don't have concepts. They have open kitchens and menus and nice young people bringing you nice stuff to eat. A bunch of them, being unlicensed, will feed you for under a tenner. None costs much more than that a head. The fact that all this is on my doorstep is a lucky coincidence. To which I can only say: hoorah for me.
full article here.
photo of curry here...
Forget the spazzy purple cow and the fact that this even is sponsored by E4, the Southbank is brilliant at the moment, there's a really great area called the wonderland - I think - which is definitely free for everyone to go and hang out in. There are bars, fast (but good) food stalls and an enchanting area with hidden wooden huts and hide out places, tree swings, tree houses, and toad stool seats all decorated with colourful paper lanterns and fairy lights. It really is rather lovely. Central to all of this is the temporary performance venue with a load of brilliant acts on for most of the summer. I absolutely recommend this one :boy with tape on his face-
