Mulan Noodle

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192 Acre Ln, London SW2 5UL

020 3518 5872

Reservations dojo.app

We visited a while ago but we thought it was really a restaurant for cooler weather as the menu comes from the north of China with dumplings and fresh noodles in hot soups. The restaurant is situated in the site of a previous Spanish restaurant and although the skin looks the same there are now bamboo seating and small tables with Chinese pictures and posters as well as small vases of flowers.

The starters are small plates of interesting vegetables like a shredded potato salad with chilli oil and vinegar. Then larger dishes are fried or street food including a cumin beef burger and then there are soups and more classic dishes including rice. The list is very long so maybe look before you visit or you will be overwhelmed. The desserts I will come to later.

We ordered Fried Butterfly Shrimp with a dipping sauce and sweet potato fries with plum powder. They were as suggested although the plum flavour was very subtle although we could see it.

For a main we ordered Stewed Brisket with hand-pulled noodles that comes in a savoury I soy broth and Cumin Beef Noodles with onion and pepper. Both were substantial and we never got through them all. We were asked if we wanted to take them and we would have but timing wasn’t great.

Now we come to the desserts which look incredibly exciting. There’s Sichuan ice jelly, Mango pomelo sago, brown sugar rice cake and our chosen dish to share – Deep Fried Milk. It is crispy fried somethings to dip into condensed milk. Very sweet but very delicious.

We ordered a bottle of Tuscan red wine and took most away although it went well with the beef and noodles. That was a large part of the cost of the meal (£35) but want was left including service was £60.29 so definitely a bargain. We hope they do well but takeaway is also an option as this food travels well.

Noko

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48-49 Brixton Village, SW9 8PR

Tel: 020 3793 0874

This is a newish restaurant at the Coldharbour Lane end of Brixton Village. It has only been open for a week, so it is on its soft launch. It is part of a small south London chain and serves Asian food and is definitely a place to try with cash in your pocket, as they don’t yet have any credit card services. But this is a blessing as you get a discount on the food you buy. Sit on small tables or at a counter watching passers by.

On Saturday the menu contained – snacks, noodles, dumplings, robato (skewers), “plates” including sake seabass and fried chicken any style. There are enough vegetarian options to produce an interesting meal. We chose Dan Dan noodles (as recommended) that includes a lot of garlic, peanuts, sesame and soy sauce, skewers of pork belly, skewers of broccoli and tahini as well as grilled aubergine. We were very hungry so we tucked in before taking pictures. There could have been prettier shots – blame our appetite.

The grilled aubergine was soft and delicious and relatively easy to eat with chopsticks. The pork belly was spicy and simple to eat with the fat giving a lovely flavour. The tahini and roasted broccoli florets was a revelation – just the right crispness and sweetness and a relief from all the chilli. Noodles were spicy too but also soft and our waitress cut them up and tossed them in the delicious sauce. We stopped there – we were full and thought we will visit again very soon especially with the 20% discount as an incentive.

We washed it down with water and a glass of a passionfruit drink. The bill came to £27.00 with the 20% discount and including service.

Bistro Union

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40 Abbeville Road

London SW4 9NG

020 70426400

home

We have visited Bistro Union a couple of times before our Sunday visit and always decided that the cost was above a general trip out on a weekday so haven’t reviewed it here. But now they do a Sunday Supper menu at £28.00 per person – an absolute bargain for the food you get. Visit soon – booking is definitely required.

This is a sister restaurant to Trinity in Clapham Old Town which is seriously good and seriously expensive – but you are in for a treat whenever you visit. Back to Bistro Union. During the week they serve a choice of snacks, small and large plates as well as some to share. On Sunday for lunch it is similar but with a roast. Sunday supper is a fixed menu – blessed relief not to have to choose – and when we visited there were three courses and an optional one. Snacks were cheese goujons – light an fluffy. An optional course – a tomato salad with fragrant dressing that we chose and shared. The main course was a deconstructed Caesar salad – the salad plus four pieces of chicken and the desert a berry pavlova that was more like an Eton mess when it arrived but no problem – we wolfed it down.

We were a party of three with a mother who is hard to please. So we took no photos, just in case. But we hit the jackpot with her thumbs up. The chicken skin was seasoned really well and the salad just crispy enough. We had a piece of chicken left over which was immediately wrapped for us to take away for a further supper the next day.

Wine comes in carafes as well as bottles and is a bit more expensive than your local – but that’s because it is really good. Not drinking too much before the hurly burly of Monday was also a blessing – as we were not tempted to dive into more than a glass and a half.

We will definitely go back for another go as the menus change.

La Taperna del Sabor

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Address: 47 Atlantic Road, SW9 8JL

https://tapernabar.com/taperna/

What can we say about this restaurant except you should visit before it disappears. This is short and to the point. They describe themselves as the best Spanish food in London which is a very bold statement that we cannot support, but only as we haven’t visited all the Spanish restaurants in London. However, we do rate this highly.

We visited on a Sunday and were pleasantly surprised that we could get a seat – it was late and there were plenty. The menu isn’t overly long, in fact the drinks menu is longer. It is a tapas bar so everything to share and smaller plates.

We ordered Ensalada de Queso de Cabra (grilled goat cheese, green leaves, cranberries, walnuts and balsamic glacé) as you can see below – it is what it says on the menu. Simple but delightful.

One of our favourites is a croqueta so we ordered the mushroom ones (setas) and the four little hot crunchy and salty ones turned up. Just enough to share.

Then we ordered the Sardinas a la Plancha and three whole fish on a plate turned up with crispy skin, slightly salty – again delicious. We ate all with bread and aoili.

Washing all down with an Estrella – cold and comforting even on a rainy day.

We lost the bill but it looks like it came to about £37. We weren’t hungry when we left.

The Mac Factory

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Website: https://brixtonvillage.com/trader/the-mac-factory/

Address: 7 First Avenue, Brixton Village,  SW9 8PR

Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday: 8am – midnight

We are losing pace with the blogs. We try to compete them a little time after a visit so that no-one can put a name to a face and we are then anonymous. However, this means they sometimes disappear before we publish. This one has but it may be back so keep your fingers crossed.

This was a new addition to Brixton Village is the takeaway (or eat perched on a stool) New York styled pasta and pizza shop. Pasta is, of course, macaroni accompanied by set of “cool” titles and pizza slices or a large whole pizza (about £27). Pizza includes Margarita, Peperoni, Mushroom (with whipped ricotta), and Ground beef (with chili and red onion). Pasta stretches beyond the macaroni, to include fettucine, spaghetti, and rigatoni.

The six types of macaroni are cooked on site and in front of you. Called Nostalgic (a signature cheese blend), La Med Babe (basil pesto, semi dried tomato, baby mozzarella) ……. you see what I mean about the titles. We ordered the La Med Babe and a Hey Mac A Rena (beef chili con carne, jalapeno, sour cream and tortilla crisps).

They were both great although mine was too big for one person and maybe a little too much cheese.

Spicy and crispy – there was an empty box by the end.

We had a takeaway as it was a little chilly in Brixton Village. Food cost £20.00 with no drinks, although they do have beer. We were full and one box had about half left over for the following day, so definitely reasonable.

Gremio de Brixton

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Gremio de Brixton

St Matthew’s Church, Basement, Brixton Hill, London SW2 1JF

Opening Times (for food)

Wednesday        6PM      10PM

Thursday             6PM      10PM

Friday    5PM      10PM

Saturday             5PM      10PM

Website: https://gremiodebrixton.com/

Phone: 020 7924 0660

Previous review link here (2015) and here (2013)

We went to visit an old haunt which has not changed in the last 9 years. It still feels like the inside of the cathedral in Cordoba with brick pillars everywhere but they have improved the lighting so you do not now need to have the torch on your phone.

We visited early-ish mid-week so out for a snack rather than a three course meal. We travel to Spain quite often so have the hang of a menu, though usually we only buy the drink and the tapas comes free. We ordered mushroom croquettes (Croquetas de champinon con ailoli), fried aubergine with honey (Berenjenas Fritas con miel), fried goats with pear and honey (queso de cabra frito con miel y pera), pork belly and crackling (panceta y chicharron) and bread with spreadable chorizo(pan y sobrasada). All surround this text. We enjoyed the ambience and the food although we should have ordered less fried plates. We really enjoyed the aubergine but left some of the sobrasada as it is very rich and salty. Despite thinking we were ordering just enough we clearly over-ordered – take note, order as you go along.

We drank lots of water and had a bottle of red wine and took home half of it to drink later. The whole mean cost £78.18 but this included £34 for the wine that washed everything down well. So only £44.18 for the food for two.

Ruben’s Reubens

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Address: 10 Market Row, SW9 8LB

Website: https://www.rubensreubens.com/

We have tried to get into this place before, but they had a strict no entry before 6.00 and we were 10 minutes early. It was Friday and we were trying to jump the inevitable queues. This time we got a seat on a Saturday but still early – book as it fills up very quickly and most seemed to have their own table. But their website tells you nothing about how to do this and we are very glad we photographed the menu.

This restaurant promotes its own smoked meat and fish with a mix of Jewish and Polish flavours. The menu is blessedly short with barbecue (lamb, sausage, wings) as well as vegie and vegan offerings (King Pao-strami cauliflower, burnt sesame broccoli, chilli cheese hispi), so a range of offers are mostly of the meat sandwich variety (corned beef, pastrami etc) although there is a veggie option. We chose the meat sandwiches.

First the obvious – a Reuben with sauerkraut, gherkins, Emmenthal, Russian dressing and mustard. As you can see this was a stack of corned beef in this one. Nicely toasted so you don’t have to balance the mouthfuls to stop it disintegrating – it was a little spicy, sour and crunchy too.

Next was a Kimchi – as it sounds it was pastrami with kimchi-kraut, gherkins, cheddar, gochujang mayo and mustard. Again a very good choice for anyone interested in a good bite to eat with a warm feeling that you have treated your gut to one of your three K’s a day (kimchi, kefir and kombucha).

Chips come with a dose of everything – salt, pepper and other stuff. We now forget if it was rosemary or mustard seed – you don’t really need to know anything more than they were delicious.

We had space for malted ice cream, gingerbread and salted caramel. we could taste the ginger but we think they need to put more Horlicks into the ice cream.

We washed everything down with beer although cocktails were available.

The whole meal came to £27.56 – a bargain! Now we have noticed it seems closed – sorry Reubens Reubens we should have been faster promoting your restaurant.

Chip Shop

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Address: 378 Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8LF  (on the corner with Atlantic Road)

tel: +44 (0) 207 2743350

email: info@chipshopbxtn.co.uk

website: http://www.chipshopbxtn.com/

Friday night is always busy in Brixton, despite the move to Thursday celebrations – but we are old fashioned enough to think that Friday means fish and chips. We re-visited an old haunt that we refer to the hip hop chip shop on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road – our last review is here. This was busy (we hadn’t booked), but they squeezed us in – literally to two seats near the bar. But although we hankered after something from the sea, we were to be disappointed. Their order has not arrived, so we were left with the mostly meat options. Just to wet your appetite prawns, fish fingers and battered cod are on the menu.

We chose from the extensive wings menu – wings in two sizes and a sauce – lots of sauces. We had sweet chili and orange glaze (RZA) and it was a bit too sweet for our taste so next time we might have ODB (bourbon barbecue) or Henny hot (Henessey infused). We are assuming that all the alcohol has burnt off. But despite the sweetness the wings we fat and juicy and sticky – we were given warm water with lemon to take care of that as it never comes off with a paper napkin.

We also chose a Red Man burger (buttermilk chicken with a spiced Mac sauce, red cabbage, red onion, scotch bonnet chilli and coriander slaw). We were a bit doubtful about the scotch bonnet hiding all the flavour, but we had nothing to worry about. We got an occasional hit and there was more in the middle but that was fine as we had built up our tolerance. This was a great crunchy, chicken and several of our veggie portions. We also needed the water and lemon for this too.

We were very hungry so we went out on a limb and ordered loaded chips. As you can see they really were loaded (Bacon, House made Nacho cheese (???), Diced tomato, spring onion & coriander). To be honest we could have done without the cheese. But these were “real” chips, crispy and altogether delicious with the addition of everything. Again the tomato cut any greasiness and we had yet another daily portion of fruit (well a tomato is a fruit).

Finally we saw that they had deep fried snicker bar and salted caramel ice cream so we had one to share. The Snickers (why did they rename it) is runny and you get all the crunch of the peanuts while the delicious ice cream cools all of it down. We were full by the end.

We washed (and I mean washed) all the food down with a pint and a half of German lager and a half of Brixton IPA.

The service was slow and so we had time to share dishes but they were full so we are forgiving. We also got some money knocked off the bill for that and we didn’t mind watching the crowd while we waited. The bill came to £50.50 but we had a £3.00 reduction. Service isn’t included. We will visit again but will make sure they have had their fish order.

Franco Manca

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Address: 20 Atlantic Road, SW9 8JA

Phone: 0207 738 3021

Website: https://www.francomanca.co.uk/restaurants/brixton/

Previous eat in review link – more than 10 years ago! Franco Manca has moved from its original small place that we often packed with a queue at weekends. It is now on Atlantic road in a big site that has seen several restaurants come and go. Brixton long-timers will know it as ‘The Railway’ or even as ‘Brady’s’. Inside it has a relatively small but bright room near the entrance with table and bar-type seating, but go up the stairs and on the left is a very large room that would be great for a pizza party – we noticed one going on when we visited.

We are very fond of Franca Manca, having been regular users back when it was Franco’s and only open during the day and then not on Wednesdays because of half-day closing! The current list of pizza’s has not been much revamped but changes with the seasons. They use sourdough with a starter they can trace to the 18th century – presumably via the original Franco. The dough is allowed to rise for 24 hours before they make the pizza then it is flashed in the incredibly hot oven for a really short time.

Of course there are pizza’s but there are also pre-pizza (olives, meat, salad stuff to share and small plates of aubergine parmigiana or cheesy stuff with meat). Salads to eat with or without a pizza – too many to describe and bread and dips. There is also post-pizza with affogato, tiramisu and other sweet treats. We were here for the pizza – was it as good as usual or was it becoming too speedy.

We chose a Napoletana and a spicy salami pizza (a sort of American hot).

The pizza below is the spicy salami one that had “lightly smoked beechwood spicy salami, organic tomato, mozzarella, caramelised red onions, homemade Franco’s chilli oil & fresh basil”. Not as hot as an American hot but the chili oil had a kick and the caramelised onions and cheese mellowed it all out.

The Napoletana had organic tomato, garlic, oregano, capers from Salina, Kalamata black olives, Cantabrian anchovies & mozzarella. This was delicious but a little more cooking would have made the dough even better.

We saw people taking pizza home but we finished the whole lot so had not space for post-pizza. We washed it all down with no logo craft lager and a glass of Montepulciana.

The bill came to £36.75 plus 10% service charge which is a lot less than most restaurants charge these days. The food only came to £22 so if you drink water this is a very reasonable place to eat. We were also full, so couldn’t squeeze in another bite. If you want to run through the menu then come with friends and only order a few pizzas so you can try the pre- and post-pizza specialties.

Temaki

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Address: 12 Market Row, SW9 8LB

Website: https://temaki.co.uk/

Booking: Open Table

This is not a new restaurant but we thought we would revisit as it is ages since we went. We also thought we were not very hungry after visiting the Ritzy – we discovered that we did have an appetite after all as this is a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds. The restaurant is small with few seats (for seats think of high stools that are arranged around the bar so you can see how all the dishes are made and served as well as being able to chat with the chefs. So you get the opportunity to ask what each thing is and of course think – well I would like to try that one too. The place was full except for one or two stools and the two tables in the cold in the alleyway. We bagged the last two seats so we advise booking.

There is a menu online and one on the board so we can’t produce them all here. There are small plates, snacks like tempura, pickles, and sashimi as well as the temaki. We chose the following some from the menu and some from the board. In order of photos: tuna temaki with shiso, Pork Gyoza, lobster temaki, miso aubergine temaki, 2 scallop ikura temaki, crispy rice temaki and pickles. We drank water and a Sakura Yuzu Negroni and a Temaki old fashioned.

All looked pretty of course and invited a bite. Starting with our favourites – the aubergine and the tuna tataki with shiso. We loved them both but particularly the tuna that was very complex even if some bits did start to make their way off the plate. The gyoza’s were also meaty and warming with the light soy sauce. We also loved the lobster with egg yolk, miso and citrus but we were split on the scallop (I thought it was too fishy). I am running out of hyperbole but the pickles were really useful to cut the richness between dishes. I was a bit disappointed by the crispy rice – they were an addition as we saw someone else order them. They looked incredibly pretty but were a bit oily and didn’t really hit the taste buds like the other dishes.

The drinks were small with lots of ice and were just right for the time we were there. You might be tempted with another as this is a leisurely meal. We did like our cocktails but couldn’t really detect what made them different to those we have had in a normal bar.

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Here we come to the bill. Do not come here hungry unless you have a large bank account. In total it was £129.95. The drinks were expensive at £22 for the two and there is a whopping £16.95 (16%) service charge. However, we will be going back as we loved the theatre and skill of the chefs. We know how much goes into each bite and so are willing to pay what it is worth but perhaps next time we will have a pizza first.