Vittles Restaurants: Three’s a Crowd
A letter from Peckham, by Emefa Ansah
Happy New Year to all of our Vittles Restaurants readers. We hope you enjoyed our chat with Hester van Hensbergen on the peasant food remontada in London at the end of last year, as well as Jonathan’s review of 2024.
Today, we see in 2025 with something a little different – three short pieces of restaurant writing from Vittles mentee Emefa Ansah, who last year introduced herself as “a proud south-east Londoner” and “second-generation Ghanaian with a deep love of food”. We felt it was a fitting way to kick off a new year and mark the midpoint of the mentorship with Emefa’s work to date.
When we asked Emefa where she would like to take us for her first lunch meeting, we were excited that she chose Agrobeso – a Ghanaian takeaway in Peckham that we hadn’t revisited since eat-in dining resumed in 2021. At Agrobeso, we talked about the reputation that West African food has among Londoners, the advantages and pitfalls of it becoming more famous, about gatekeeping, and most of all about Peckham. It quickly became clear to us that Emefa has the ability to write about anything but is particularly interested in restaurants that become a part of everyday life – the routine of a post-church Sunday meal, hot food that can complete a night out – and above all, her beloved Peckham. That is why we love these three restaurant capsules: together they paint a small portrait of life in modern Peckham, its rhythms, its characters, its culture, all things that can only be described by being truly embedded.
Three’s a Crowd
A letter from Peckham, by Emefa Ansah
Agrobeso
‘Even God rests!’ my mum would exclaim as she threw her hands up, dramatically exiting the kitchen. There’s a certain sanctity to a Sunday meal, and like all things holy, it takes work. Sundays, in our house, were for celebration: dressing up, singing, dancing and eating. Big outfits and labour-intensive meals. All for the glory of the Lord, of course. However, very occasionally, my mum would go on strike, too tired to cook. And on those occasions, like many Ghanaian families in South East London, we’d go out to eat the exact same food we ate at home. We’d go out to Agrobeso.
Agrobeso – a chop bar – serves up Ghana’s best dishes. Opposite Peckham bus station, it’s hidden in plain sight with green and white signage. The walls shield you from the considered chaos of the Peckham ecosystem in a way that’s not dissimilar to Accra’s own Makola Market. The yells and huffs of aunties running to catch buses, the holler of uncles offering the very best deals (just for you) and the slow sighs of buses breaking as they come to a halt all slip through the constantly fluttering doors.
On the menu is your classic, smoky jollof party rice that would win any jollof war (this is an official ruling). Big bowls brimming with rich peanut soup are served with omo tuo and portions of slowly simmered red red sit in illuminating pools of sweet, onion-flavoured palm oil. All can be paired with tilting piles of soft, caramelised plantain. The food is a reflection of patience and a sponsorship by Maggi seasoning, the MSG boosting the saltiness, spiciness, sweetness and funk of the dishes.
Like at many chop bars, the restaurant is simple – the staff are easygoing, the place casual. Plastic chairs are gathered around plastic tables. A big plastic bottle of hand soap is the only ornament on the table, ready for handwashing in the big bowl of water carried to the table. Seating is communal, so you’ll need to be ready to share. Recently, I was reminded of the taxi driver who exclaimed to me on my last visit to Accra: ‘In Ghana, you can never be lonely!’
You should go, but not on a Sunday afternoon, unless you fancy fighting it out with other striking mums gunning for a table. Trust me – you won’t win. They’ve got God on their side.
139 Peckham High St, SE15 5SL
Blue Nile
As a veteran of the Caribbean vs. West African feud that took place in my Camberwell school playground in 2004, it feels somewhat traitorous to be hyping up Caribbean food. And yet, despite my childhood animosity, when I walk the streets of Peckham in search of comfort, desperately looking for remnants of the old and often gasping at the presence of the new, I find myself turning towards the backstreets of Queen’s Road and Blue Nile.
Blue Nile is not your classic London Jamaican takeaway serving smoky jerk and deeply savoury stewed dishes. It’s something far more rare: one of the few Jamaican restaurants in the capital, alongside Little Ochi and Etta’s Seafood Kitchen in Brixton, that focuses on seafood. Its pepper prawns are my go-to: plump prawns are simmered in a deep red sauce, flavoured with sweet onion, garlic and scotch bonnet peppers. A true comfort dish that is best paired with an outrageously large portion of pumpkin rice, with its deep orange flesh flecked onto every grain.
The restaurant has a strange intimacy, the slightly open kitchen doors offering a peep into the slow shuffling and gentle clanging of home cooking. Like Peckham itself, the space is a mix of the old and new(ish), with signs of what the building once housed – a Turkish kebab restaurant – conspicuous in the bright mosaic glass lamps which hang alongside pictures of whales leaping high above artificially blue tropical oceans. When eating in, I choose to sit in the comfortably dim back corner, taking refuge beneath the 77-inch wall-mounted TV, which blasts either uplifting gospel music or 2006 dancehall. It doesn’t really make any sense, but it leaves you feeling sure that what comes next will be different.
After you order, ingredients are pulled from the fridge and Pam, the chef and owner, begins cooking at a very relaxed pace. You may eventually earn the right to chat to her, but she usually prefers to cook alone. She will up the heat if you ask, but you had better mean it. Her dishes can be mouth-searingly hot. When I’m taking out, I always leave with a heavy load of food, heat radiating from it, oil glistening on the paper bags of fried dumplings, rushing to get home, excited. Blue Nile, to me, is the essence of old Peckham and if hyping it up makes me A Traitor, then sign me up for season four.
25 Meeting House Lane, SE15 2UN
Felix Kebab Grill and Afrikiko Bar Restaurant & Club
There are a few generally accepted but unspoken rules about late-night spots. They are:
1. Match the energy of the owner. If they’re chatty, you chat. If they look like they’d rather be tortured slowly than talk to you, then it’s best you keep quiet.
2. Go spicy. Regret has likely already made up a part of your night.
3. Avoid vegetables. If present, they should only be seen as a comical side project, a sad attempt to jump-start the healing process due to begin the next day.
4. Be generous to yourself. The damage is most likely already done.
The late-night suya window Felix Kebab Grill, next to the Afrikiko Bar Restaurant & Club on the Old Kent Road, fulfils every single one of these rules. It’s a boys’ club, usually filled with three or four men, some working, most there purely for the company. Airpods in ears, they’re quick, calm, focused. This 4 x 3-metre box is an offshoot of the main restaurant and is filled with an eye-watering amount of smoke, which flows from the extractor chute, snaking its way around the building and then up the road.
If you’re into rule 2, then you’ll be pleased to hear that the boys at Afrikiko are heavy-handed with their suya mix, which teems with chilli powder, ginger and ground peanuts. Fatty pieces of lamb and sweet turkey frankfurter-like sausages are skewered onto wooden sticks and grilled until the skin is blistered and crispy. Sold by the stick, order as much as you can handle. Once ready, the skewers – hot parcels for sheepish customers shifting impatiently – are quickly wrapped in newspaper. When handed mine, I immediately tuck in, the smoke, spice and thick pollution of the Old Kent Road all mixing together. It’s intoxicating.
In the morning, as the shadows of decisions made linger like unwelcome guests, by finding that greasy piece of newspaper at least you know you did one thing right.
871 Old Kent Rd, SE15 1NX (cash only)
Credits
Vittles Restaurants is a publication from Vittles dedicated to restaurant guides, reviews, and recommendations, edited by Adam Coghlan and Jonathan Nunn, and copy-edited by Liz Tray. All photography by Emefa Ansah.
So so good I love these pieces !
fantastic, a treat to read and savor. what a great way to start the new year, Vittles! thank you!