The Camberwell Arms

Camberwell Arms, restaurant review: Hearty and comforting food ...

They commissioned a temporary wooden pavilion from the architects Lettice Drake and Paloma Gormley (Antony’s daughter) to go on the roof of Peckham’s multi-storey car park, alongside a sculpture exhibition called Bold Tendencies.

The pavilion, a red tarpaulin stretched over wooden struts, offered a refuge from the elements, while a menu promised cheap treats like grilled sweetcorn and smoked paprika, barbecued plantain with hot pepper sauce, and ox-heart kebabs.

People started to talk about this rooftop thing, with its lovely views of night-time London, its grill-and-barbecue dishes, its increasingly groovy clientele.

When I learned that new Camberwell Arms, previously The Recreation Ground, had been bought by the team behind the Anchor & Hope in Waterloo (a place that started so many gastropub things, including a no-booking policy)  – and that the head chef was Mike Davies, previously ensconced at the A&H and Frank’s – my appetite was whetted beyond endurance.

When Sophie cursed her fate to find that the chocolate and pear crumble tart with butterscotch sauce was off the menu, Siobhan brought her some of the sauce anyway, with wedges of poached pear from another dish.

The Camberwell Arms: 'Comforting and ebullient' | The Week Portfolio

The Camberwell Arms is a "comfortable-as-an-old-shoe gastropub", says Fay Maschler in the London Evening Standard.

It has won both the Observer Food Monthly's best Sunday lunch gong and a Time Out Love Food Award - and it more than lives up to the hype.

In fact, says Maschler, it "exemplifies and lays out for our delectation everything positive that has been happening in restaurants recently".

This restaurant is not alone in responding "ebulliently, reasonably and decently to the business of eating and drinking", says Maschler, "but it does seem unusual in its insouciant unified sense of purpose".

The Camberwell Arms is at 65 Camberwell Church Street, London

The Camberwell Arms

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Fay Maschler reviews Camberwell Arms | London Evening Standard

ES Food Newsletter The motto beneath the heraldic design that heads the menu at Camberwell Arms is “All’s Well”.

As a matter of fact, there is only one table for two at Camberwell Arms.

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Weekday dinner with a couple of friends is notable for the chilli-hot crouton, those aforementioned calçots with almond-nibbled fiery-red sauce and the calming cheese, singed mussels with bacon plus chargrilled octopus with confit potatoes, pickled onions and paprika to start plus a huge, film- star-handsome Barnsley pork chop — a cut across the loin of a big pig lacquered to shiny, treacly darkness — and the Longhorn beef lasagne.

Camberwell Arms pays due attention to the drinks list, with what look to me like interesting beers (what do I know?)

OFM Awards 2015 best Sunday lunch: The Camberwell Arms | Life ...

“I’m bricking it a bit,” says Michael Davies, chef/co-owner of The Camberwell Arms in south-east London, when I ask for his reaction to OFM’s reader-voted Sunday lunch gong.

His fellow owners are veterans at this lark: Jonathan Jones, Rob Shaw, Trish Hilferty and Charlie Bousfield’s collective CVs include such restaurant royalty as the Eagle in Farringdon and the grandaddy of modern British cuisine, St John, and they now also run the Anchor & Hope in Waterloo and the Canton Arms in Stockwell.

“The thing is,” Davies says plaintively, “it’s not as if we do a traditional Sunday roast anyway.”

“It may not be your standard roast,” Davies says, “but it is in spirit.

While it never pays to second-guess readers, I’d bet that, more than anything else, is why you lot voted Davies’s Sunday lunch Britain’s best.

Camberwell Arms | Bars and pubs in Camberwell, London

This well-proportioned Victorian boozer has been revamped by the team that produced Waterloo’s Anchor & Hope and Stockwell’s Canton Arms – both of them excellent gastropubs.

This was a quiet spot compared to the front bar, where lots of enthusiastic imbibing was helping fuel the noise levels.

The menu is in a similarly rustic and seasonal style to the Anchor and the Canton.

A blackboard listed ‘half a chopped rabbit + chopped black cabbage for two £28’, while the printed menu included ‘pork fat and scotch bonnet on toast’, and ‘ox tongue, beetroot and horseradish’ – this is food for adventurous palates.

There’s also a decent wine list and well-stocked shelves of spirits, though the rowdy mob in the bar appeared to be sticking to lager-lager-lager on our visit.