Six of One: On the Right Side of the Road
Palacsinta, plus five other London restaurant recommendations for this weekend
Welcome back to Vittles Restaurants and to the first instalment of Six of One for 2024. A map with all 97 of the Six of One recommendations published in 2023 can be found, used, and enjoyed here.
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Six of One is a column dedicated to London restaurant recommendations. In each issue, six writers will share a restaurant, bakery, cafe or takeaway spot that they believe deserves to be better known.
You can find the full Six of One back catalogue below:
Polentina and five other recommendations; Inihaw plus five; Kulcha Express plus five; Triple One Café plus five; Samak Seafood plus five; Lakehouse Hungarian; Restaurant plus five; Salteñas Martin plus five; Best Foods Supermarket plus five; Thenga Cafe plus five; Charcoal Champ plus five; Chai Kadai plus five, Fine Cut Butchers and Steakhouse plus five; Souvlakiland plus five, Bali Satay House plus five, Yasmina plus five, Orchid House plus five, Dalchini plus five, and Kateh plus five.
Today’s recommendations are from Michael O’Mahony, Lorraine Yiwen Lu, Mark Corbyn, Yanyu Sun, Angela Hui, and Gavin Cleaver.
1. Palacsinta
Palacsinta, a new-ish galette bar on Camberwell New Road, sits, fatally, one street down from Camberwell's restaurant quarter and so receives nowhere near the love it deserves.
Now, the galettes are good. Really good actually. The owner uses buckwheat flour, a Swiss gruyère that he’s particularly proud of, and I had prosciutto and egg this time. The music is also really good as is the whole energy of the place.
If it were just the crepes, Palacsinta would be a great lunchtime spot to have nearby. But Palacsinta is more than that: it's worth travelling to. A few months ago, the owner expanded the scope of his little restaurant to include wine.
And honestly it’s the wine: A selection of unfined, unfiltered wines from Central Europe (all organic or biodynamic). This is what’s made Palacsinta a “I really want you to go to this place” kind of place.
The other night (after a pain of a day) I had a ‘Richard’ Chardonnay from Slovakia that was startlingly elegant. If it said Burgundy on the label it would be a heartbreaker. My friend Alan had a Müller-Thurgau that he was reluctant to hand over (me the official taster of all things that evening). There was a skin-contact wine whose provenance I missed but that was so friendly it would be the ideal gift because your friends would love you and believe that you loved them. And a red from fourth-generation Serbian winemaker Oszkar Maurer that was easy-drinking, delicious, and in a way I find hard to describe, sort of true. Throw into the mix a bit of chat about Uralic languages, a dessert wine or two, and suddenly this side of the big junction in Camberwell – with the new record shop next door and the recently-adopted-by-art-students Old Dispensary – looks like the right side to be on.
Palacsinta is one of those peculiar places built of the passions of its owner – it is a little unexpected and doesn't slot easily into the established templates for natural wine bars in London – but above all, it is a very enjoyable place to drink good wine, with simple and lovingly made food to accompany it. Michael O’Mahony
352a Camberwell New Rd, SE5 ORW
2. Abu Maher
