London Peckham Restaurant Guide

Peckish for pizza down Peckham way? Andrea Asciuti’s popular pitstop is a pint-sized, 20-cover premises (a lot of the business is for delivery) and punches well above its weight, with a superb selection of funky Neapolitan pizzas (from 72-hour fermented dough), panuozzo (Neapolitan street-food sarnies), tapas (e.g. arancina, deep fried aubergine balls, lobster croquettes) and puds (including Nutella pizza, natch).

The top floor of the National Theatre has been through a number of incarnations and its latest is the autumn 2023 spin-off from Peckham Rye’s hip roof-top bar that’s long been a favoured spot for sundowners and nibbles for fun-loving SE15 types. Most reports see this new branch as “a fabulous addition to the Forza family”, saying: “at last, the National Theatre has a buzzy restaurant to be proud of – with its fab location, a table on the beautiful and spacious wrap- around terrace is unbeatable on a sunny day, serving lovely sharing plates of modern Italian-ish tapas and an excellent drinks list”. On the downside, service can be “a bit chaotic” and “all over the place”. Top Menu Tip – “memorable cauliflower fritti with aioli. Yum!”

This 15-strong London noodle chain (now with branches in Brighton, Birmingham and Bristol) is “a good stand-by” – perhaps it’s “not as good as some of its competitors”, but it is widely seen as “good value”: in particular “the lunch-time meal deal” is a winner.

After 20 years, Peckham pioneer Claire Fisher’s “refectory-style” venue “keeps on delivering wonderful South Indian food”, including “some cracking veg dishes, though it’s not all vegan by any means”. “We first went 16 years ago and it has remained consistent through all this time – the difference is that then it was a lone star in an area short of places to eat, now it’s one of many”. Top Menu Tip – “homemade paratha is a must”.

This contemporary European venue behind Peckham Rye station is still one of the most interesting restaurants in Peckham (“absurd-sounding, I know, to our parents’ generation, but that makes it very cool!)”. That said, it no longer attracts the superlative ratings of five years ago, and one school of thought finds it “overrated and expensive”. Inspired by the ’bistronomy’ movement of Paris, it serves appropriately “interesting” low-intervention and natural wines.

This “great sharing-plates restaurant with very accommodating staff” – and a “good wine selection”, its primary focus – has been a linchpin in the emergence of Peckham’s going-out scene (“I’ve never had a bad meal here: in principle I’m not a fan of small plates but here it all works”).