Saturday night at the Golden Grill

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:

You have been warned

I think it’s a little unfair.

Author: Peter

Long-time resident of Camberwell, author of this blog since July 2004.

63 thoughts on “Saturday night at the Golden Grill”

  1. 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!

  2. 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.

  3. 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?

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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!

  9. 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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