The Bear, Camberwell

Despite Camberwell's increasing reputation for all kinds (and all budgets) of great food, it still seemed unlikely that this bare-bones pub, just opposite the Walworth bus depot and furnished, as far as I could tell, with tables and chairs nicked from the local secondary school, could house anywhere worth eating at, never mind somewhere worthy of a special journey. Sure, the beer selection was decent (largely Brixton Brewery but also Timothy Taylor and a couple of other bits) and there was a chalkboard by-the-glass wine list that perhaps hinted at greater capabilities, but the Bear - and I'm being kind, here - does not feel like a gastropub.

And yet, just around the back of the bar, past the DJ booth (well, of course) and the *shudder* toilets (more on that later), there is, astonishingly, a 12-seater kitchen counter restaurant serving the kind of menu that wouldn't be out of place anywhere with table service and tablecloths. It's a lovely thing, the menu at the Bear, partly because in a city whose asking price for a meal out has spiraled from "how much!?" to "2nd mortgage" in the space of 6 months, it seems exceedingly reasonably priced, but mainly because, without a hint of exaggeration, you will want to eat every. damn. thing. on it.

Alongside cocktails (a very nice Negroni and a very slightly less successful Margarita which could have done with being a bit sweeter and lime-ier but still looked very pretty) we had a ham croquette each and in an instant, as we bit through the crunchy, grease-free breadcrumbs and into the soft, gooey beschamel studded with solid chunks of pig, we knew we were going to be in safe hands. There's a lot that can go wrong with a ham croquette (or jamon croquetta, depending on where you're eating it), but the Bear have got theirs absolutely right.

And from that moment on, we were putty in their hands. Even without the immediacy and flattering attention of the counter service, closer to the experience at a high-end omakase than anything so humdrum as a gastropub, the food at the Bear would have stood out on its own exceptional merits. But watching your bowl of smoked cod's roe being lovingly prepared, then brought together with bubble-crusted foccacia and super house pickles on the counter in front of you, just made the whole thing that much more magical.

Devon crab - a giant mound of it - was boosted by ribbons of delicate pickled cabbage and a zingy yuzu dressing, and then topped with roasted peanuts and (I think) powdered nori, a merging of the finest British ingredients and Japanese technique that was impossible not to love.

Even more astonishing - and believe me, that's saying something - was smoked eel, which we first spotted above the coals on a miniature yakitori grill then later served (quite brilliantly) with pickled forced rhubarb and ginger. Soft, sweet and salty, and with the smokiness a subtle extra note rather than anything too intrusive, it was another masterclass in Japanese-leaning seafood cooking and had us swooning.

Coyly described on the menu as 'XO noodles', this turned out to be a strangely familiar arrangement of thick, bouncy belt noodles soaked in a complex herby, meaty sauce and topped with a soy-cured egg yolk. I have to assume the more than passing resemblence to Bancone's handkerchief pasta presentation is more than a coincidence - influences stretch across cuisines as well as geography, of course - and alongside the witty appearance it was distressingly easy to wolf down.

Duck "Kyiv" has understandably, even at this early stage of the restaurant's life, become a bit of a signature dish. Because what's not to like about minced duck wrapped around wild garlic butter, coated in breadcrumbs and fried, and then dropped on top of a silky-smooth buttered mash and game jus? Nothing, that's what. But although this was indeed lovely, it was hardly the only reason to visit the Bear. I honestly believe you couldn't order badly here.

So, the perfect restaurant, then? Well yes... and then no. I would have been more than happy to give the Bear my top marks - stellar, original and inventive cooking, matched with magical service - until I made the unfortunate choice to visit the conveniences. What greeted me was like something from the last days of a festival - a graffitied chipboard cubicle containing a dirty single toilet with no seat, and an empty soap dispenser. And I don't care how charming and unaffected you think it is to offer a bathroom in such a state, I'm afraid if I'm paying £80 for my dinner the least I expect is not to physically gag at the thought of having to use it.

But, you know, there is a lot to love elsewhere at the Bear. And with at least the possibility they could get that disaster of a bathroom fixed - and I very much hope they do - I will give them the benefit of the doubt and just dock them just the two points. But please do bear in mind (no pun intended), that your enjoyment of a meal here may depend on your being able to hold it until you get home. Or at least to another nearby pub whose bathroom arrangements are less medieval.

I want to end on a high note though, and so I will. A final bowl of gorgeous donuts straight out of the fryer, dipped in home made lemon curd, brought the evening to a slightly more sanitary end, and actually a few days later my over-riding memory of the place isn't - fortunately - of the horrors lurking behind the gents sign but of that fantastic smoked eel, the gooey ham croquettes, and the engaging and enthusastic manner in which it was all served. The Bear will, I'm sure, do well. But I might wait for a return visit until certain assurances have been made.

8/10

Nandine, Camberwell

Another week, another fantastic new restaurant in Camberwell. I try not to moan too much on this site about the fact that certain areas of town seem overly saturated with great places to eat, while others have to wait decades between worthwhile new options, but it's hard not to be wildly jealous of the residents of Camberwell who have such a selection on their doorstep they could conceivably eat somewhere different and good every night of the month without having to leave SE5.

The latest addition to Church Street, fitting quite comfortably into the spot recently vacated by Mike & Ollie (opposite FM Mangal, a few doors down from Silk Road and Camberwell Arms FFS), is Nandine, a modern Kurdish restaurant. The menu at Nandine is that unbeatable combination of mostly familiar and wonderfully offal-forward ingredients treated in exciting and unfamiliar (at least to anyone who isn't already familiar with Kurdish cuisine, which definitely includes myself) ways. So although you may not recognise words like Tapsi, Tirshak, Kubba, Dandok and Jipa, you might - as I did - read descriptions such as "Pan-seared chicken heart with Kurdish Riha chilli sauce, garnished with watercress and pomegranate" and allow yourself to become very excited indeed.

First to arrive though, was turnip. And if you think I'm playing down the description of this dish for dramatic effect, you'd be right. Because Shelim e Kulaû is one of the most surprising and delightful dishes I've eaten in the last couple of years. Sort of a cross between sweet potato and turnip, so sweet and soft but earthy and rich, came dressed in a remarkable black tea and mulberry molasses mixture that nimbly danced a line between sweet and sour, herby and fruity - partly strangely familiar and partly completely new. But the stroke of genius was a sprinkling of smoked sea salt on top, which created a whole other level of flavour profile, like eating salted caramel in vegetable form. We were told this is a traditional Kurdish street snack that the kids eat on the way home from school. Lucky kids.

Tirshyat was a bowl of house pickles, which arrived with the warning "careful with your lighter clothing, they stain". Which is both a useful bit of advice and also a nice neat way of demonstrating how lovingly home made they were. Cauliflower, carrots and cabbage were all expertly balanced, not too sweet and not too vinegar-y, but predictably my favourite were the miniature pickled chillies which had a lovely bite and packed quite a punch of heat.

Kinger were little deep-fried balls of potato, caramelised onion and Kurdish wild foraged artichoke roots, and if you're wondering how a restaurant in Camberwell gets hold of wild Kurdish artichoke then you're not the only one. Turns out that certain key ingredients (the artichoke, and the wild pistachios for the dessert) are sent over by her family back in the Middle East, so not only is the food at Nandine excellent but you have a very good chance of coming across an ingredient literally not available anywhere else in the Western hemisphere.

Chicken hearts were also on the menu, so obviously they had to be ordered. Chilfra had wonderfully tender little morsels of offal, with just enough bite without being chewy, in a herby chilli sauce studded with mint and pomegranate seeds. Perhaps if I'm going to be brutally honest this dish was closer in style to the kind of thing I'd had before, but the fact this stood out as being more familiar just shows you how unique and exciting everything else had been.

At first glance, this tray of lamb kebab may seem familiar - ordinary, even. But this is an artifice that lasts only until you take your first bite, because believe me there is absolutely nothing ordinary about the way these things are constructed. Instead of the more usual homogenous dense mince, the texture of these Lula kebabs is a mixture of lamb flank and mutton, with - we were told - a specific type of fat from the outside of the mutton shoulder that loosens and enriches the meat to a texture so soft and light it's apparently a skill to not have them fall apart on the grill. The result is a "kebab" closer in form to a kind of rustic grilled mousse, a dark salty crust encasing a fluffy, gamey filling that's so dangerously easy to eat they can almost be inhaled. Incredible stuff.

I had also, of course, to order the stuffed lamb tripe - Jipa, which was every bit as lovely as I'd hoped. Soft, wobbly bits of fat alongside firmer - but not chewy - tripe, stuffed with fragrant cinnamon rice and almonds, and all in a smooth bone broth, it was another offal masterclass. To provide texture to contrast with the main ingredients they'd cleverly deep-fried strips of tripe into offal scratchings, which would have been a nice little snack by themselves.

After having polished off all of the above - the food at Nandine, despite looking unfamiliar and intense on paper, is remarkably easy to eat - it's testament to the quality of this homemade Qazwan baklava that this, too, didn't last long. As I mentioned before, the pistachios on top are foraged from the wild and sent over by owner Pary Baban's family back home, and came on top of a silky smooth milk pudding and folds of delicate filo pastry. Like everything that had come before, it was inventive, rewarding, and that beguiling mix of unique yet eerily familiar.

There can be no greater compliment to Nandine that I don't think there's anywhere else like it in London, and if there is then I need to know about it. It takes a lot to surprise and beguile a jaded London food blogger in 2024, and yet the team at Nandine have somehow come up with a restaurant concept at once fiercely distinctive and authentic while flattering with just enough that's familiar to allow you to enjoy it to the fullest. It's one thing to introduce an unfamiliar cuisine to a new audience, but to do it so lovingly and successfully requires real skill and a genuine gift for hospitality. Nandine has all that going for it and more, and judging by the crowds packing into this buzzy little spot on a cold Wednesday night, it's already struck a chord. Another great place to eat in Camberwell, then. I'm not jealous, honest.

9/10

I was a friend's +1 to this invited meal, and we didn't see a bill. From a brief tot-up of our dinner though I think the bill would have come to around £50 a head with plenty to drink, so pretty reasonable.

Little Cellars, Camberwell

Having enjoyed the original Peckham Cellars very much, I eagerly jumped on a very kind invitation to their new Camberwell offshoot. Little Cellars is aptly named - there's a couple of high tables for 6 in the middle of the room and 8 lower seats arranged looking out of the two downstairs windows - and I'm afraid when I saw how closely to each other complete strangers were expected to sit, my heart did sink a bit. But whatever you might think about communal seating, it's really the only way a venue this size is going to make any money without charging double for the menu, and actually in the end we were perfectly happy occupying a couple of seats at the end of a row, looking out onto Camberwell High Street.

The menu at Little Cellars is, much like its sister restaurant, an unbeatable mix of small plates served at very reasonable prices, and the occasional eye-catching premium larger dish for those who fancy splashing out. So, for example, we have these lovely cheddar beignets, hot out of the fryer, a crisp, greaseless crust giving way to an ethereally light, fluffy cheesey interior. This is a bit of pastry work worthy of the very best restaurants in town, and in fact were a lot nicer than the Comté gougères I had at a recent meal in Claridge's lobby restaurant. Yeah, I'm name-dropping. Get over it.

Charcuterie - all Italian - were of excellent quality and, at £10, a pretty generous portion for the money.

Terrine was way bigger than you had any right to expect for a measly £8, with plenty of interesting textures including just enough fat to loosen it in a very appealing way. If I'm going to be brutal, there wasn't quite enough salt in the mix, and as always seems to be the case, the restaurants that season all their dishes perfectly have salt and pepper on the table that you never use, and whenever you need extra seasoning there's none available. Still, this was still a very good terrine (and plenty of cornichons too).

But a dish that needed no extra seasoning - and in fact was unimprovable in every way - was the beef bourguignon. I'm always wary about ordering classic French dishes in British restaurants, because it's a style of cuisine that leaves absolutely no wiggle room. It has to be made perfectly, down to the last detail, or the whole house of cards comes falling down. This dish was absolutely perfect, from the tender chunks of melting beef shin, to the glazed baby carrots and shallots, to the thick, beefy red wine sauce studded with bacon. Underneath it all, a supremely smooth and buttery mash that, on its own as a side, would have been worth the trip to Camberwell alone. So now, one of my favourite dishes in London is served (sometimes, at least) in a little neighbourhood restaurant in Camberwell. I did not see that one coming.

Instead of the sweet desserts, which didn't really seem too exciting - I find panna cotta to be a dessert served by restaurants that don't like desserts - we had a cheese course. For £10 (there's that value again) we were served immaculately kept room-temperature Langres (always a winner), St Maure (a fruity and firm goat's) and - best of them all - Bleu de Causses. This is a cheese, rarely seen in the UK, matured in caves in the Roquefort style not in Roquefort but in the Gorges du Tarn, a magical part of the world where medieval villages cling to the side of precipitous stone cliffs while birds of prey soar and call overhead. If you ever get a chance to try Bleu de Causses - or indeed travel to the Gorges du Tarn - you should absolutely take it.

This was an invite, so we didn't see the bill, but I worked out with a couple of negronis to start and a couple of glasses of wine the bill would have come to about £50pp, which is a real bargain relative to what you might expect to pay for food of this standard somewhere more central. And yes, I had a couple of minor faults to point out but then that's just in the interests of documenting a more fully rounded experience - I still bounced away from the place high on the memory of that beef bourguignon and the cheeses.

We finished, and in fact began, our evening over the road at a charming - and rightly popular - little wine bar called Veraison wines, where the enthusiastic staff offered to keep a bottle of wine in the fridge between aperitifs and post-dinner. Already a fantastic place to eat and drink - I'm sure you already all know about Silk Road, Camberwell Arms, Forza Win, Stormbird, Theo's and the Crooked Well - Little Cellars is yet another reason to take the 171 bus from Elephant (or however you choose to travel, other transportation methods are available) and deserves to bring a whole new set of food lovers to the area. Now if you could please open in Battersea, you'd have my eternal gratitude.

9/10

I was invited to Little Cellars and didn't see a bill. Apologies - again - for the poor photos, I'm still on iPhone backup.

CheeMc, Walworth Road

With deep and heartfelt apologies to those who call the area their home, there aren't too many convincing arguments to visit Walworth Road of an evening unless you have a particular fondness for betting shops, nail bars and standing traffic. Caught in a bit of a no-mans-land between the heaving Elephant & Castle roundabout (more recently less of a roundabout than a strange C-shape, but still heaving) and the genuinely enticing restaurant options of Camberwell, it's more of a conduit than an area, and up until quite recently its most significant impact on my life has been making me late for dinner at Silk Road. And I really do not like being late for dinner.

But, the merest hints of a dynamic food culture are flickering into life. As with so many (for want of a better word) unlovely areas of town, rents tend to be lower and with the freedom to be a bit more experimentational with your concepts and not worry too much about paying large investors back, London's restaurateurs can spread their wings a bit. True, Louie Louie wasn't quite my cup of tea in the end, but I like the fact that it's there, an okonomiyaki restaurant in South London, because why the hell not, a pleasing example that there are some people out there taking risks.

I wish I could tell you that I had a more successful evening at CheeMc than at Louie Louie, that I'd finally found my Korean chicken nirvana and that Walworth Road finally deserves to be spoken about in the same breadth as Camberwell Church Street or Brixton's Market Row. Sadly, we're not quite there yet, but it's still heartening to see a quirky, independent little operation like CheeMc pack them in on a rainy Sunday evening even if, in my usual tedious way, I could still find fault with a lot of the food served.

Partly my gripes were with the menu, which was large to the point of overwhelming and included a rather geographically ambiguous mix of Japanese staples like ramen, katsu, udon and takoyaki as well as Korean classics like bibimbab and soondooboo jigae. Had the food which appeared been better, I could have overlooked the game attempts to be Jack of all trades, but once a rather lacklustre bowl of udon ramen appeared, tasting of packet stock and raw onions, it quickly looked a lot less like idiosyncrasy and a lot more like an identity crisis.

Japche glass noodles were better, containing nice fresh vegetables and a confident hand with the sesame oil, and were pretty easy to enjoy in a straightforward kind of way. £7.90 does seem like quite a lot to pay for a some stir-fried vegetables and noodles, though. I could have them delivered to the door for that from a few places on Just Eat.

Bibimbab was good. Not astonishing, but good. More interesting once doused with gochujang, certainly, and there wasn't really anything significantly wrong with it, it just did its job as much as as a bowl of rice with various bits of veg on top can do.

The only real disappointment was the chicken. I don't pretend to be any kind of expert, on this or anything else, but I've had good Korean fried chicken, and I've had bad, and this was not good. Poorly butchered, in fact hacked into a strange collection of misshapen bits of pieces with broken bones jutting out at ugly angles, they were no less upsetting to eat than look at, being overcooked and tough, and coated in a chilli sauce that tasted of nothing much more than dry chilli powder. We soon wished we'd ordered a half portion instead of a full (£18.90), but even that would have been far too much to pay for a fairly mediocre pile of wings. Even an included bowl of sweet pickled daikon couldn't make this value for money.

With a drink each, the bill came to £16.31/head, great if your life's ambition is to eat vegetable noodles and poor fried chicken, not so great if it isn't. And I'm very much in the latter camp, so it seems my search for the Best of Korea goes on. Perhaps I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and travel all the way back to New Malden; if they can't get it right there then there's no hope for anyone. And for now, the Walworth Road will go back to its primary function of slowing me down on the way to dinner in Camberwell. If anything changes, though, you'll be the first to know.

5/10

Louie Louie, Walworth Road

I should probably say up front, at the start of what will turn out to be a rather mediocre review, that of all the ultra-specialist Japanese restaurant types, I've always found okonomiyaki to be the least engaging. It's not that there's anthing particularly wrong about the combination of shredded cabbage, egg, bacon, mayonnaise and tamarind sauce (and whatever else you may find in there - okonomiyaki literally translating as "how you like"), it's just that I would seek my fill of kaiseki, yakitori, sushi, ramen, udon, soba and a few others, in that order, before I began to harbour a serious desire for cabbage omelette.

"But it's comforting, hangover food," I hear you say, "it's not supposed to be life-changing". Perhaps not. But it seems odd to me that Japan, a country that raises almost every aspect of eating out to an art form, would obsess (and they do obsess, based on the number of okonomiyaki joints I passed in Tokyo when I was there) on something so... well, ordinary.

It's also probably fair to say that to get the "full" okonomiyaki experience you need to be sitting around a hotplate with your dinner cooking in front of you - it's an interactive experience - and for various very sensible reasons this isn't possible at a popup in a café on Walworth Road. So, while the main events cooked backstage we got stuck into some starters, such as this very pleasant arrangement of pickled mushrooms and cucumber....

Fried lotus roots were greaseless and crisp, dressed in seaweed salt...

Japanese "tacos" were a bit wet and bland, but had a decent serving of fresh tuna so weren't a complete waste of time...

...and ssam short rib, Korean interlopers, had a lovely soft texture and plenty of flavour once paired with gochujang.

"Angry wings" were nice enough, certainly pretty heavy on the scotch bonnet, though could have done with a bit of a crisper skin. Also, rocket is the devil. But apart from that, fine.

After that, the okonomiyaki arrived. I have three photos here of the three different styles, but as you can tell, visually they weren't exactly distinctive so I'll leave you to decide which was which because I sure as hell have no idea myself. And it has to be said, they tasted pretty similar to eat too, despite one containing seafood, one involving beef & mustard, and one with pork and kimchi. This is probably largely to do with the fact that 90% of any okonomiyaki is egg and cabbage, dressed in mayo and tamarind sauce, and whatever else you add to the mix tends to get a bit lost. As I have mentioned, they were fine - not inedible, not wrong, just a bit underwhelming. And at £13/£14 a pop, not particularly good value either.

I should point out that by the time we left Louie Louie on that wet Thursday evening, every table in this attractive little space was taken, so there are clearly enough omelette fans in SE17 to make the numbers work - at least for now - and despite my own reservations, for this I'm glad. I may not have been bowled over myself, but anyone trying to do something a bit different, in an area of town that you'd usually only visit on the way to somewhere else, should be applauded. I doubt I'd be back, but if the idea of paying £12 for a cabbage omelette fills your heart with joy, well, you know where to go.

6/10