Festa sul Prato, Folkestone Gardens, Deptford, London SE8 5JE (07814 829912). Breakfast dishes £1.50-£8.50, starters £3-£8, mains £10-£14, all wine £20
I travel this country so much, some of my friends call me the train whisperer. They claim I have electrified rails for bones. I know the differences between the unreserved carriages on the East Coast and West Coast lines. I know where best to stand on random station platforms – York, Cardiff – to have the best chance of getting a table seat, and what time past the hour the trains depart from Manchester for London. When my work on The One Show took me to Wales regularly, the guards at Paddington would allow me through the gates early because we were on first-name terms. I’m a trainspotter with benefits, the benefits being that I actually get on the trains.
To be honest, these past three months when I have been completely off the rails have been a blessed relief. For one, it has spared me the eccentricities of the great British travelling public: the woman sitting opposite me one morning who, as we chuffed past Slough en route to Bristol, took out wet wipes and swabbed her armpits; the man who started watching the football on his iPad without headphones on the way back from Newcastle and when challenged on the noise pointed out indignantly that it wasn’t a quiet carriage; the myriad dog owners who think their animals are so damn lovable that I should feel privileged that they choose to wander unhindered down the carriage and stick their noses in my crotch while I’m trying to work.
This is my way of acknowledging that my reviews have been London-centric for the past three months. I like to think of myself as the critic who reaches the parts other critics don’t reach – Oban, Llandudno, Woking – but sometimes circumstances do not allow. In a couple of weeks, I will once more be the wandering (non-observant) Jew. As Steve Coogan’s character in The Trip – the character called Steve Coogan, who was standing in for the Observer’s regular restaurant critic, ie me – once pointed out, I will once again be the man who travels hours to sit in front of a bowl of orange soup.
That said, being able to get deeper under the skin of the hungry city I call home has been fun. You don’t just have to go to Sowerby Bridge to be intrepid. Take this week, for example: I went to Deptford. Yes, really. I’ve lived in south London for 30 years this month, and yet to me this is the undiscovered country. It turns out all you have to do is head towards New Cross and turn left. Here, in an undulating park built on the site of a massive second world war bombing that was meant for Rotherhithe just a mile to the north, you’ll find a former 1970s public toilet block, built from bricks the colour of dried mud. It is that thing all cities should be good at: a brownfield site turned into a delightful place for lunch. What’s more, it’s on all the marked cycle routes from New Cross to the banks of the Thames.
For this, all credit should go to Martin Hoenle, from southern Germany. He’s a veteran of the hotel business who has lived in London for years and spotted that the disused building had been given an A3 licence. Weirdly, Lewisham Council were reluctant to let Martin follow through with his plans; they muttered about noise in a residential area. It’s bizarre, because Festa sul Prato – which roughly means party on the lawn or in the park – is the kind of use for abandoned buildings that any community should want. It’s whitewashed and airy inside with a large open kitchen, a bar stacked with whole cakes, a high-pressure coffee machine knocking out killer espressos, and, on the back wall, a blackboard drawn up with enough options to get you from first thing to last.
This being London 2018, they will, of course, crush avocado on to toast for you in the morning. They will knock up a huge full English, with pork products of impeccable provenance – all their suppliers have their photographs on the walls – for £8.50. Lunch is through the week with dinner on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. All wines are £20 a bottle. Occasionally they house supper clubs here, and so on.
The temptation with a place so utterly cheery and fun and good-hearted is to rave and dribble, in a way which raises the food on to some culinary pedestal. Festa sul Prato does not need to be worshipped in that way, because it offers that thing we all crave: the good, the solid and reliable, at a fair price. For Sunday lunch we start with a plate of their antipasti, piled with pink folds of Parma ham and peppercorn salami, pieces of marinated artichoke heart, olives, and handfuls of rocket. A cheese plate brings scoops of runny gorgonzola, lumps of mild toma and pearly leaves of mozzarella. There’s a big plate of oil-dribbled, still-warm toast. That makes the cherry tomato toast we order slightly redundant, except it’s lovely, the tomatoes roasted to a sweet squidge.
There’s a meat and a non-meat pasta dish each day at £6 or £10. A tenner gets you enough to take some home in a box. Our penne with a long-simmered sauce of ground-down Italian sausages is the star. All other mains come with the same sides: crisp, nutty rosemary-roasted new potatoes, a handful of properly sautéed mushrooms that are golden and brown in all the right places, a bit of salad. Roasted beetroots of many colours are vegetables taken seriously. A steak tagliata doesn’t quite match its description. The dish requires the steak to be sliced up – tagliata means to cut – but here it’s served as one flat, minute steak. Still, it’s well cooked and pelted generously with cracked pepper, which always makes me happy. We have a hefty slice of lemon drizzle cake from the local Blackbird Bakery, because the job demands it, not because we are hungry.
When I first heard about Festa sul Prato, via email, it was described to me as an exemplar of “how to navigate the choppy gentrification-by-food water with grace and aplomb”, and I think that’s right. Good parks should come complete with cafés priced within reach for as many as possible, which is what this is. It also happens to be a hell of a lot more.
News bites
Buon Apps in Otley, West Yorkshire, serves a similar purpose to Festa Sul Prato. It’s a sturdy, reliable Italian, which can both feed those looking to linger and those needing a quick lunch. Plus, being by a river, there’s a pleasing outdoor area. Nothing about the menu – pasta, pizzas, some big-fisted mains – will prove hugely surprising, but they do it all very well (buonappsotley.co.uk).
Wolseley owners Corbin & King have launched an initiative to increase the number of people aged over 50 employed by their expanding group of restaurants. ‘Around 30% of the UK workforce is now aged 50 or over, yet this is not reflected in hotels and catering,’ says co-founder Jeremy King, describing it as a ‘missed opportunity’. Currently just 65 of their 900 employees are over 50.
More details have emerged about ex-Noma chef Simon Martin’s forthcoming restaurant Mana, in Manchester’s Ancoats. He’s planning to serve a 16-course tasting menu in 1 hour and 45 minutes. That’s one course every six and half minutes. Gulp.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
