London Brixton Restaurant Guide

2021 Review: Chef Pietro Franz has now left Pop Brixton for this simple, stripped-down, forever home where he serves Sicilian small plates and pasta. Little survey feedback so far – more reports please.

This two-year-old all-day restaurant and wine shop occupies a “lovely conversion of an Edwardian laundry” in Brixton. “The terrace is fantastic” and “the food is good – bavette steak & chips for £17 is pretty good value these days”. It’s the first restaurant from Melanie Brown, a former chef and wine buyer for Kiwi star Peter Gordon who went on to found the New Zealand and Australian Cellar wine businesses.

In Brixton Village market, Nicholas Balfe’s interesting spot is worth discovering, with its downstairs bar (snacks and sharing dishes) and upstairs dining room (a set menu of either four or seven courses). “Passionate and knowledgeable staff deliver lovely food and some really interesting and unusual wines.”

2021 Review: The “lovely Thai food” at these reliable cafés is “impressively authentic given that they are a chain” – “excellent value” and “fast”, if occasionally let down by “iffy service”. Founded in 2008 by Saiphin and Alex Moore, who inherited the name of their first East End site, the group has 18 branches in London and expanded to Liverpool, Manchester, Reading (delivery only) and Leeds following the sale of a majority stake to US investors. The couple also have two spin-offs, Lao Café in Covent Garden and the new Chinese noodle bar Hoh Sek in St Katharine Docks.

This “cracking Thai” trio in Battersea, Brixton and Tooting are highly recommended for their delicious and authentic dishes. Run by a large extended family, they have a “great atmosphere” – and the BYO policy keeps prices down.

2018 Review: “There’s a long queue but it’s worth it” insist fans of this Brixton Market BBQ, known for its “gorgeous pulled pork and brisket”. Service can be “brusque” though, and the odd reporter felt very short-changed here: “maybe they’d run out, because we were passed off with rubbish”.

“Wow! What amazing, punchy and exciting food” – ‘contemporary West African cuisine with a foundation of age-old recipes and techniques’, using British ingredients, is the promise at Nigerian-born Adejoké ‘Joké’ Bakare’s August 2020 newcomer in Brixton’s Market Row. It’s the new forever home of her supperclub, which won the Brixton Kitchen competition in 2019. Early feedback says it’s “highly recommended: the tiny room is very basic, but that means nothing gets in the way of enjoying the wonderful hospitality of the owner and her team!”.

“OMG! that’s what you call a burger!” – fans of this Brixton Market Row and Boxpark Shoreditch operation insist that their patties – dry-aged beef served with cheese, bacon, onion jam and garlic mayo – are “mind-blowing”. “Side dishes are great, too”. Founders Liz and Stew launched five years ago after working ski seasons in Whistler, Canada – haunt of black bears.

“Sink your teeth in and savour!” the “bold flavours” of former MasterChef winner Tim Anderson’s take on Japanese cooking using foreign or ‘barbarian’ (Nanban) ingredients, showcased in his “fast and furious” 10-year-old pop-up-gone-permanent on the edge of Brixton Market. “Their noodle dishes became a lockdown delivery staple, packed with flavour, a wonderful smoky depth to the tea eggs, heart-warming broths”. A new Covent Garden offshoot opened in September 2021 at Kerb’s Seven Dials Market, focused on ramen dishes.

“The kids are always delighted by their ‘bunny’ pizzas, and we think you can’t go wrong with the sourdough offerings” at this highly rated South London group, with seven venues from Brixton and Peckham to Tooting and Sydenham. The stripped-down interiors are matched by home-made desserts, local craft beers and small-batch coffee.

2021 Review: “Everything here is great, but I totally loved the paneer burger” – an alternative to the best-selling bhangra burger on the menu of these popular pop-ups, in POP Brixton and now also Vinegar Yard, SE1. After over ten years in the game, the business shifted up a gear in May 2019 with the opening (flush with £300k of investment having won BBC2’s ‘My Million Pound Menu’) of the new forever-home listed here: a 50-seater in Camden Town’s Stables Market.

The Nguyen family run this duo of no-nonsense Vietnamese cafés in Peckham Rye and Brixton – well-rated all-round for their tasty scoff: soups, salads, rolls and other simple dishes.

2018 Review: Fun, “friendly” tapas haunt in the atmospheric crypt under Brixton’s St Matthew’s Church, fuelled by cocktails and a decent wine selection; DJs at the weekend.

Fried chicken junkies beat a path to this first permanent site – in Brixton’s Atlantic Road arches – of a team who also have street food stalls in Leicester Square, Pop Brixton and elsewhere around town.

2019 Review: “Amazing to see perfectly cooked Peking ducks and crispy pork belly coming out of a tiny shipping container!” – this “modern Chinese canteen” occupies one of the units at Pop Brixton, and the results are “super tasty!”

Aidan Bryan and Tom Blackshaw (who worked together at Sticks ’n’ Sushi) have taken a unit in the poshly converted ex-department store complex that’s nowadays HQ to Squire & Partners (architects on many of London’s super-luxe landmark projects, like Chelsea Barracks). Here, you are invited to, er, ‘rebel against the establishment’ – apparently that means ordering some of their non-traditional sushi options. No survey feedback as yet, but good word-on-the-street vibes.

Ex-Bonnie Gull chef James Mathieson heads up this post-lockdown 2021 newcomer, located on the ground floor of Brixton’s Design Store, and owned by Squire & Partners – a family-run architectural practice. It incorporates a cobblestone courtyard for alfresco dining – on the menu, Mediterranean dishes ‘from the Aegean and Balearics to the Levantine basin’.

“Incredibly good, inventive food” – “delightfully light, with loads of flavour” – has put this Brixton two-year-old on the map with its focus on the cuisine and wine of the Tuscany marshland it’s named after. It’s a “lovely local”, run by “friendly and knowledgeable people”, and the unusual wine list includes some “good choices at a reasonable price”.

“A Brixton gem” – Joe Sharratt and Margaux Aubry’s French-inspired small-plates venue “is a wonder”, and wins plaudits across the board for “food, wine, service and vibe that are just unbeatable!” “What I love is that the menu doesn’t constantly change – they’re creating modern classics that will endure, especially the pork belly and the crab salad”. “Margaux is a miracle of grace, enthusiasm and good taste” – “she keeps some of the most interesting drinks in town and she’s got the gift of knowing how to translate one’s vague ideas into actual glasses of loveliness and surprise”. “Book well ahead as it is always crammed.” (As at September 2021, the offshoot at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Other Palace theatre in Victoria remains closed due to the pandemic.)

Another branch for the upscale kebab purveyors, this time in Brixton; see also Kebab Queen.