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Welcome to the Camberwell Online blog, a place for free and spirited exchange on anything with even a tangential connection to the South-East London district.
Saturday night at the Golden Grill
Published by Peter | Filed under Eating & Drinking, General, Places
On Saturday night we took a stroll through Camberwell Green in all it’s post-midnight glory.
We’d been out in Waterloo to see some friends off on a long trip; drinks were at the Arch One Bar & Grill, a cavernous space dominated by an enormous TV screen. Table service from a charming waitress, Caipirinhas £7 each. £7! For rum, lime and sugar! I didn’t have one, I just noticed the price.
1.30am and we were walking through the Green in pursuit of a late night treat: a chicken kebab from the Golden Grill. They’ve been open since 1979 and are very proud of it, displaying the date on their blue uniforms. I think they show fantastic patience to cope with the demands of their core clientele, the drinkers of the Silver Buckle next door.
Kebab in hand, we stopped at one of the multitude of off-licences further down Camberwell Church Street for a drink worthy of accompanying the food. One of the owners, an elderly Asian man, was laughingly fending off the agressive, insistent statements of a customer who was claiming he had seen the man’s wife dancing naked.
Back on the road to home, past the Funky Munky which was it’s usual twitchy, noisy self, we had to quickly cross over to avoid a group of five men who were rolling around on the floor and trading punches. After we’d skirted them I looked back and they were laughing together, with their arms around each other as they headed Buckle-wards.
We got home and opened our meals; the ’small’ kebab could have fed the 5,000, it was so big. That’s why the Golden Grill have been around since 1979.
The next morning I went to buy some orange juice and I was confronted with this:
I think it’s a little unfair.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Golden Grill is the best Kebab house in the world.
I took my Dad there and they treated him as well as if he had been Ataturk himself.
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January 15th, 2007 at 11:18 am
The Golden grill is great! They seel enormous and very nice portions of falafel in pitta - just the ticket when returning home dunk and hungry.
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January 15th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Are you ‘dunk’ now, Hannah?
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January 15th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
i wish - just over worked and tired!!
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January 15th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Ah yes. I’ve not tried the chicken, but many a time twixt public house and bus stop have I stepped inside and ordered myself one of their tasty Kofte kebabs. Great beer-food.
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January 16th, 2007 at 9:30 am
So what is that picture about Peter? Where is it? I don’t get it…
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January 16th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Looks like that disused alley by Somerfield small (as opposed to Somerfield sh***e).
Need to get councils and businesses talking about why councils overcharge and why businesses don’t take enough care of their environ (clue - they are being charged more than residents for identical services).
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January 16th, 2007 at 10:20 am
we actually get services in southwark?? where do they hide them?
nice to see the thick n crusty poo has been cleaned from the public loo on the green. although the only reason i know that is that the door’s still wide open. syringe seems to have replaced turd. it’s a fair swap guv.
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January 16th, 2007 at 10:36 am
It’s the alley behind the post office opposite the town hall - the one where the drunks do odd jobs in exchange for free beer, apparently.
If you take a look at the photo in maximum resolution:
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=357242673&size=l
You can see that someone has written ‘Fly Tiping’ in biro.
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January 16th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I used to be a fan of the Golden Grill but The Good Husband has fallen out with them after they ignored him & took orders off all their mates as they rolled in one night.
Admittedly this was over Christmas & the good husband had been partaking of the festive spirit- which may well have influenced his opinion of the chaps.
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January 16th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Speaking of poo – the four-legged kind – it’s disappointing that so many dog owners allow their canine friends to sh*t all over the pavement (I am thinking particularly of Camberwell Grove and the through passage to the park behind the church). It’s almost like the offending dog owner/s have their animal on a tight leash and are dragging the poor dog/s along as they are trying to go, probably surreptitiously scanning the area to see if anyone has noticed. It means you have to keep your eyes on the pavement at all times unless you want your shoes ruined. Although it’s good to see that Southwark has a ‘flag the poo’ campaign (see link), but for now, I have noticed that I still have to keep my head to the ground.
http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/environment/AnimalWelfare/dogfouling.html
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January 16th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
How about Southwark scientists extracting doggy dna on each occasion, and operating a policy of strict liability against the owners?
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January 16th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
@Lulu: I wouldn’t have thought that keeping your head to the ground was the best option in this case.
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January 16th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Good point… I might get poo in my hair! Eyes closely monitoring the pavement would be a better option.
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January 16th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
There should be no dogs allowed inside the M25.
They are little more that child mawling sh:t factories.
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January 16th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
By contrast, “The human being is a being that, in being, is concerned about his being,” according to Heidegger. Jung thought this kind of philosophy was “a pisspot of unconscious devils” and that Heidegger was “fit to burst with presumption and vanity.”
The book on Heidegger I found where the man gave me his trousers continues to offer some interest on a dull and damp day in Camberwell, when even the Dark Horse has an improvised sign on the door saying something like “We are open - please pull the door and come in.”
I see The Bolu was “Established 1975″ beating the Golden Grill by 4 years.
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January 16th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Whilst on the subject of poo and kebabs, I must confess to cycling home in the pouring rain drunk a few years ago after being out til midnight, following through and pooing behind the phonebox outside Redstar. I wiped my behind on a discarded umbrella and then went to Bolu’s to clean up and get a good ole Chicken Shish before bed. Thus combining both kebab and poo topics in one short anecdote.
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January 16th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Dagmar: I feel I need to know more about this man giving you his trousers. Was there any discourse immediately preceding the event? Was he trouser-less at the time?
bukowski333: well yuck, but *midnight*, that’s not very late really - a weak constitution, on both fronts, so to speak?
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January 16th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Hilariousness.
A friend in ‘Imperial Gardens’, when it first opened had a glorious night. He was searched at the door and had his drugs removed from his trainer. The same drugs were sold back to him by a ’security’ guard once inside. He went to the loo and leant on the wall whilst peeing. He came out into the club room and discovered a long strak of white paint up his arm, from the freshly painted wall he leaned on not yet having dried. Having danced for a couple of hours he returned to the toilet for a crap. Having done his business he discovered there was no paper. Undeterred, and being a resourceful chap, he took off the sock that had contained his drugs, wiped, and flushed it down the pan.
He now lives in Lima.
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January 16th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
oops: “long strak of white ” streak.
Imperial Gardens had a habit of never ringing drinks through the till
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January 17th, 2007 at 9:07 am
@Dagmar: I imagine the mid-to-late 70s was the Golden Age of kebab shops in Camberwell.
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January 17th, 2007 at 9:13 am
ahhh poo stories!
myself and mr bukowski333 were enjoying a lovely summer’s afternoon skateboarding at the Kennington Park bowl, a couple of years ago when we saw a fairly sketchy looking chap hanging around in the, very thin, “cover” of the trees. Sure enough he whipped down his kecks and started ‘his business’.
bukowski333 also spotted him, and it wasn’t long before a rousing chorus of “HAVE A SHIT MATE!” was echoing the park. great days.
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January 17th, 2007 at 9:22 am
A few years back when Ms Standing and I lived in Oval we were shocked by the constant signs on the gates Kennington Park warning about human faeces and asking for people to report the offenders. Needless to say great care was taken before lying down to sunbath…
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January 17th, 2007 at 9:41 am
I stopped rolling down hills as a kid after a friend of mine rolled through poo.
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January 17th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Oh gosh, I’m not sure I should be telling this… when I worked at Southwark Council, I once had a bad case of the runs. I was in the office and suddenly had a bad feeling, so ran to the toilet - too late. I’d filled my underpants. I took them off and cleaned myself up, but I didn’t want to leave them in the bin because of the smell; so I threw them out of the window.
I worked on the fourth floor, and they landed on the side of the roof opposite - in clear view of all the offices on one side. I could see them every time I went into those offices.
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January 17th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Tough call but I ‘d say Peter wins ‘Scatman of the Year’ because he’s not blogging anonymously.
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January 17th, 2007 at 11:56 am
The day my partner put the flat on the market, I was still smoking, and first thing in the morning coughed a right retch of a cough, and being naked in the kitchen, a poo shot out of me the size and shape of a dark brown rat and landed splat on the wooden floor. I discreetly disposed of it, of course. This was not an installation or intervention I was going to boast about just yet. But I was secretly pleased at this down-to-earth comment on progress, that issued not so much from my bumhole as my subconscious. Heidegger would have been proud of me.
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January 17th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Too late Ben - Dagmar’s vile addition took the crown in spite of her anonymity.
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January 17th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Remember Lisa Stansfield, the popstrel who sang “Been around the world tonight but I can’t find my baby…”? Well, I heard on good authority from someone who knows her that lovely Lisa defecates into a freezer bag, pops it in the freezer til rigid, then uses her own faeces as a dildo.
That’s my favourite scat story ever.
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January 17th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Bizarrely, I heard this story too. Don’t worry everyone, I mean the Lisa Stansfield story.
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January 17th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
That’s weird; and also possibly libellous (or is it defamatory?).
I once heard that Lisa Stansfield was allergic to her own saliva.
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January 18th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Hogan’s Ghost! I have been appalled and made slightly nauseous by some of these posts. They detail coprophilic activities above and beyond anything I experienced at Sandhurst, or during my incarceration in Barlinnie for that matter. I feel both disturbed and queerly aroused.
Speaking of feeling queerly aroused, who is this Stansfield hussy and does anyone have a contact number for her?
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January 18th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Here’s hoping the Standard story doesn’t link to the potty-related threads on here - what will they think of the neighbourhood.
Were any of you at some sort of meeting in the Cadleigh on Monday night…?
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January 18th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Here’s hoping the Standard story doesn’t link to the potty-related threads on here - what will they think of the neighbourhood.
Were any of you at some sort of meeting in the Cadleigh on Monday night…?
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January 18th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Louie Louie
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January 18th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
It’s a bit late but I had a close friend who always said “when it comes to the bedroom anything goes but I draw the line at eating my own shite”.
He’s now an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. In another part of the country. Not sure his profession related to his oral predilections.
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January 18th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Change
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January 19th, 2007 at 9:13 am
[...] I recently made an extremely embarrassing poo confession. [...]
January 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
#Sigh# We’ve talked about food on this blog for so long, it’s almost inevitable that we’re now talking about what it leads to.
The circle of life is beautiful. Just beautiful.
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January 20th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Totally off topic but - Does anyone know what the expansion plans of Sainsburys in Dog Kennel Hill are?
I was absolutely devastated to see the only decent coffee place in all of Camberwell had shut down for 6 months. No more Starbucks unless I go into work - still, added motivation, I guess, for putting in an appearance rather than working from home.
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January 20th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
sg - see the thread on sustainable communities at http://www.se5forum.org. Following a recent review, the Government might be about to make it easier for “out of town centre” supermarkets to get built or expand.
And Dog Kennel Hill is probably categorised that way, as its car park is almost always packed, unlike that of Old Kent’s Tesco.
I wonder whether I am the only one who believes the best coffees in town are served by quality independents if you are lucky enough to find them.
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January 20th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I agree regeneguru. I’m not a fan of Starbuck’s coffee, it always seems a bit too milky and bland to me. The coffee at Chave De Douro is very good, however.
And who wants to sit in a supermarket, sipping coffee and gazing out over a car park?
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January 20th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
A colloquy on coffee? Is this the CamberwellOnline Blog or the DulwichOnline Blog?
Speaking of Dulwich, I had a lovely meal tonight in Franklin’s with an ageing floosie of my acquaintance. Apparently there is now a Franklin’s in Kennington also. All we need is one in the middle.
On the way up there I noticed a police van the size of a mobile home stationed outside the Silver Buckle. It was still there on my return. Are the filth taking preemptive measures now in the war against binge-drinking and antisocial behaviour, I ask myself?
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January 20th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Starbucks is a scam - They choose the cheapest grade of coffee availiable (ie: the stuff that used to get rejected as not good enough for human consumption in halycon days) - So for a start it takes like crap anyway, then the crap barista incinerates the life out of it,then they put some syrup in it (ie:orange cordial and call it a Valencia) then they put it in a 1 litre cup!!! - where do they think I’m going to put all that? I’m not a bloody donkey - Typical American shite that gets embraced as the golden rule by the pig-shit ignorant 60% who don’t think or question anything…
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January 21st, 2007 at 9:33 am
eusebiovic - I’m not a shareholder, I don’t work for them, I simply like the taste of their coffee, so sue me. You think it tastes like crap, well I probably don’t like the taste of half the stuff you eat but that’s neither here nor there.
Don’t ask for syrup, and ask for a tall rather than venti - simple.
And I like the convenience of having a coffee before I do my weekly shopping. So sue me again.
I take offence at your suggestion that I might be ignorant simply because I like their coffee. I can assure you that I’m not.
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January 21st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Did you frequent Franklin’s when it was in Camberwell, Lord H, or were you still in Surabaya? The real Franklin’s was here a long time ago, when wine had just been introduced in this country in large enough quantity and you could take your own there and sit in the back yard surrounded by antiquities.
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January 21st, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Is that where it originated? Well blow me down!
I had the saddleback belly. And I’m not referring to Lady H.
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January 21st, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Franklins was primarily a big antique shop on the Camberwell Road near the Gentlemen’s Traditional shoe shop which is still there. You could be dining on the vast Georgian patio right next to a large bust.
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January 21st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Benjamin Franklin, bored with enforcing the right angle between Colorado and Nebraska, uncertain of a writing style to compete with the educated folk wisdom of Thoreau, or a place amongst the American humorist tradition which would lead exorably to Artemus Ward, and disillusioned with the already-apparent imperialist notions of the ‘States, even in its birth pangs, decided to turn to Camberwell.
Like-minded fellow social revolutionaries joined him. All were disappointed with the descendants of Sir Edmund Bowyer, who took the Wyndham coin and gave up his name as well as half a bed for a dowry. They spread the nasty rumour amongst peasants that the Boywer coat of arms was bend sinister, not dexter, an aspersion on the sanctity of his noble lineage.
Bowyer Bastard, went the chant.
It was the Franklin Forum.
Soon, however, as with so many Camberwell revolutionary groups, they began discussing culinary matters, leading to the great debate as to whether Old Lady Bradshaw’s chocolates were flavoured with red or green cardamon. This sponsored a mass riot and hanging on the very site at which the Silver Buckle now stands.
As their impact on 18th Century social policy was minimal, Franklin decided to set up a restaurant instead. He then returned to America, and the rest is history, whereas this is apocryphal.
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January 21st, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Wouldn’t it be great though, sg, if you could have a great-tasting pre-shop coffee that was made by an independent local trader, instead of a soulless global corporation that is intent solely on opening 40,000 identical outlets worldwide in the next few years?
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January 21st, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Isn’t “soulless global corporation” a tautology?
Where do I go for my pre-coffee coffee?
I remember that Franklin’s antiques shop now. I never saw anyone go in there ever. And as for the Gentleman’s Traditional shoe shop, I once forked out a great chunk of my vast inherited wealth for a pair of shoes in that joint and they split on me within two months! I hadn’t even been stomping on the grasping fingers of the hoi polloi at the time either. I now buy all my boots from R M Williams. Built to last, like my fiefdom!
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January 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am
Fine apocryphy, regeneru, and excellent reasoning. Exactly: the psychogeographers fall out, schisms develop and they become situationists talking about langoustines.
Or shoes.
It was a pair of Crockett & Jones shoes that lead me to be given a man’s trousers in Cobourg Road, just off Burgess Park.
I was cycling round the park and stopped to look again at St Mark’s school with its enigmatic memorial to the “St Mark’s Little Army” of several thousand, several hundred of which were killed in the First World War. The church is now a mosque, has been since 1980. The chap who worked for years in the really good Turkish-run dry cleaners on Church Street, they had a service for him there. He died just before Christmas aged 50, there are pictures of him on the door of the shop and inside.
Anyway, in a big pile of household rubbish by St Mark’s was a Crocket & Tubbs boot in excellent condition and my size. The boots, handmade in Northhampton since 1879 by four generations of the families of Sir James Crockett and Charles Jones, cost £280 new. I was looking round for the other boot when an incredibly pleasant African man came out of the schoolhouse which is now flats and said, “Would you like some second-hand clothes?” “How kind,” I said. The day was going well and it would have been churlish to decline such a kind offer in the midst of vast urban cynical distrust. Five minutes later, he came back with a big pile of clothes. There were a pair of fabulous jeans my size, the latest model, which I gratefully accepted. “I was trying to find the other boot,” I explained, holding up the other boot, “they’re very well made and expensive.”
The next day I went back looking for the other boot which didn’t turn up. But I came away with a paperback beginner’s guide to Heidegger.
Old Heidegger!
The German philospher strongly believed in Being, built a hut in the Black Forest, helped his lover Hannah Arendt escape to America from the Nazis, whilst doing Nazi salutes to help keep his university going, which in turn helped ensure the development of existentialism in France after the war.
This Camberwell we exist in… Jamail Newton, St Mark’s Little Army… There’s a small stone plaque by the lake in Burgess Park in memory of three landscape architects and a valuation surveyor “committed to the creation of Burgess Park” from the bombsites, who were themselves killed in a plane crash before the park was finished.
And do so to Asda on the Old Kent Road, to check out their langoustines. As an act of faith in the locals, perhaps, whose squatters opposed the arrival of the Walmart-owned palace, the fish counter offers a gourmet spread of exotic marine creatures. But the fishmonger standing behind it, probably a local, has a lonely working day. I’ve never seen anyone buy a single shrimp there.
Franklins, full of antiques inside and outside on the dining patio, could never exist today. People went for the food and ambience, but I think that many also went for the antiques, without paying for them.
The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.
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January 27th, 2007 at 9:00 am
hi ben patio,
it would be nice if I could have a great tasting coffee. Never mind the rest of it.
Re coffee that is available in Camberwell, sorry but I find Tadim’s coffee too small, too cold and too watery. They might be independent and good on them but their coffee is not to my liking.
And I’m not going to walk to the other side of Camberwell to get a coffee at that Portugese place people have mentioned. Too far.
So basically, I don’t really care about the coffee shop’s ownership, suppliers or business plans - I simply want a decent coffee at a convenient location.
Starbucks brews coffee I like - some folks like Nero but I find it too strong.
Why does everything in our lives have to be seen as a political statement these days?
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January 27th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
It’s not politics. It’s ethics.
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January 27th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
But.. hey ho. Each to their own. I buy coffee from Pret a Manger from time to time, and they’re part-owned by McDonalds. It’s difficult.
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January 27th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
And the coffee in Seymour Bros is half decent, I’ve found.
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January 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am
All the coffee and chocolate and teas in the Sun and Doves - espresso, cappuccino and so on - are Fair Trade - and have been for ten years.
When it’s made right it’s easily the best coffee cappalattaccino you’ll get in this area.
We’ll be doing a range of filter coffees soon too. And pastries and artisan breads.
And better juices. We’ve just installed an automatic orange juicer and a vegetable juice blender but there’s a small space problem with this one right now. Smoothies soon too.
And vegan dishes on the menu. Next Tyrell’s vegetable crisps and there’s something else.
Starbuck’s does about 5% of the product range we do. And only 15% of their coffee is fair trade.
What does that say?
They are globally dominant.
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January 28th, 2007 at 11:32 am
The Fair Trade discussion is interesting.
Now I’m all for buying anything that claims to be environmentally, politically or ethically correct etc etc above stuff that isn’t. Why only last week I turned down a job because it was with BAT
However, price has a big part to play. Yesterday, on my weekly Sainsbury’s visit I needed to buy coffee. My choices? Sainsbury’s own organic coffee for £2.49 v. a bag of Fair Trade coffee for £3.80 or something like that. A big price difference for the same amount of coffee.
Sorry, but cost wins most times and I’m sure I’m not alone in having that view.
Mark - Sun and Doves sounds interesting but I thought it was a pub?? Does it have a no smoking policy now? I might give it a try and see what the coffee tastes like.
Thanks for the tips about Seymour Brothers. I’ll also give it a try.
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January 29th, 2007 at 10:41 am
There’s a small coffee chain around the City called Benugo; their coffee is fairly traded, their milk is organic, and their prices are lower than Starbucks or Cafe Nero. They do a roaring trade. Progreso only have two shops so far but are “actively looking for locations for more”. I’d much rather see either of those in Camberwell than one of the big chains.
Disclaimer: I don’t drink coffee.
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January 31st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I’ve seen the ‘Warning’ ‘You will be prosecuted’ sign as well. They (who I think are the owners of the disgraceful excuse of a shop at the end of Shenley Road - but that’s a whole posting in itself) appear to be referring to fly-tippers and people who dare to park outside the gates. Anyway, it gives me a giggle every time I see it. The people who put this sign up need a lesson in basic law. Firstly, people are prosecuted if they are in break a criminal law. Now, unless Southwark Council has recently passed a bylaw that says people must not park outside these gates or fly-tip rubbish on the private land behind the gates, then people cannot be prosecuted. Indeed, this is a civil matter and the owners of the land would need to fund a civil case. I doubt if they have either the wit or means to support a civil case. Furthermore, the sign in itself may be illegal. The people who put this sign up can only be described as Dumb-wits!
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February 2nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
Gordon Ramsay’s langoustines have come in for some criticism from Frank Bruni.
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February 3rd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I had some of Gordon Ramsay’s langoustines on Tuesday night, as my wife and I went to Claridges for our wedding anniversary; I thought they were excellent.
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February 22nd, 2007 at 4:29 pm
for independent coffee shops try http://www.delocator.com
this will tell you where the alternatives to Seattle’s Shite are
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