Atlantic Road, London SW9. Open Mon-Weds 10am to 6pm; Thurs-Sat 10am to 10pm; Sun 12pm to 5pm
It was while I was eating the burger, the juices dribbling down my wrists, the scent of properly aged dead animal in my nostrils, that I realised I was being an idiot. A few months back I reviewed Kaosarn, a stonking Thai restaurant in an old covered market a short walk from my home in Brixton, south London. I hesitated before writing that review because it seemed lazy to cover somewhere so close to home. I am accused often enough of metropolitan bias, and though I do pretty well on the out-of-London stakes I could see that writing about somewhere that was practically within the back end of my own postcode would just be throwing lighter fuel on to the smouldering embers of a row.
But I have spent more and more time at Brixton Village since that review and become increasingly convinced that it is the most exciting, radical venture on the British restaurant scene right now. I spend hours every week wading through dismal press releases about the latest glossy openings, each of which has left no change from a million or more. These are places with lighting concepts and colour waves and boards full of investment bankers, which really is just rhyming slang. They are built and designed from the front door in rather than the kitchen out.
Brixton Village, formerly Granville Arcade, is entirely different. It's a dozen or more restaurants, most of which would have been opened for the price of a trip to Ikea. They don't have concepts. They have open kitchens and menus and nice young people bringing you nice stuff to eat. A bunch of them, being unlicensed, will feed you for under a tenner. None costs much more than that a head. The fact that all this is on my doorstep is a lucky coincidence. To which I can only say: hoorah for me.
Which is exactly what I thought as those fabulous meaty juices coated me courtesy of the marvellous Honest Burgers (Unit 12). It speaks volumes for Brixton Village that it would be impossible for me to write about everything there, but some ventures demand to be mentioned and Honest Burgers, part of a recent revolution in London burger quality, is one of them. The offering here is a serious rival for the title of best reasonably priced burger in London.
It was set up by two cooks who met at the Brighton fish restaurant Riddle and Finns. Inside it's all bare wooden tables and bare light bulbs. What matters are the patties, made from 35-day aged beef from the Ginger Pig, seasoned only top and bottom, and served on a slightly sweet, glazed brioche-like bun. The basic burger with red-onion relish is £6.50. The Honest Burger, with crisp smoked bacon, mature cheddar and crunchy pickled cucumber, tops out at £8. (Not listed on the menu, but available to those in the know, is the Federation Burger, dreamed up by the Kiwis who run Federation Coffee on the next block in the market: the same as an Honest Burger, but with two patties, yours for £12, aneurysm optional.) Chips are triple cooked, skin on, dusted with salt and rosemary and the edible equivalent of crystal meth. They can also do a wheat- and gluten-free bun from WAG Free (Unit 26), a bakery directly opposite which has become a godsend for coeliacs since it opened.
The newest arrival in Brixton Village is Mama Lan's (Unit 18), a tiny space which grew out of a British-Chinese gal's supper club and blog. The menu, executed by her formidable-looking mother with the help of her father and boyfriend, is a tiny selection of bright, blisteringly fresh Beijing street food. You can watch Mama Lan roll the casings for the beef and carrot or pork and Chinese-leaf dumplings, fried off to a crisp base, to be dipped in bowls of dark, sweet vinegar. Yours for £4 per serving of five. Under the heading "street snacks" there are plates of cold shredded chicken dressed with a chilli oil that will make you blink, or cold sliced slow-cooked beef with Chinese herbs and spices. Five-spice boiled peanuts with celery and crunchy, slippery wood-ear fungus is one of those things that makes you feel you are being good to yourself. There may be technically better dumplings in London, but these win out on pure zest.
If eating the entire menu at Mama Lan's hasn't filled you up, go round the corner to Elephant (Unit 55), a tiny Pakistani street-food café serving vivid, turmeric-bright chicken curries at £6 a plate, with soft, buttered breads. Their potato, onion, spinach and chilli pakoras – deep-fried fritters served with a slap of raita – are a little dense, but their crisp, light samosas make up for it. (Though the best samosas I ever ate were at Maumoniat International Food Store on Brudenell Grove in Leeds. In the 1980s. Ah, those greasy brown-paper bags of hot, spicy loveliness.) There are also intriguing looking thalis, both meat and vegetarian.
Around the corner from there is the Brixton Village Grill (Unit 44), a dark-painted, substantial-looking Portuguese piri-piri house serving salt-grilled sardines, spicy chicken wings and hunks of flame-grilled leg and breast for £8.50. There is a big Portuguese community in this part of south London, and this is a very solid place in which to see what they can do with meat, fire, salt and chilli. Salads are fresh, chips crisp and service lovely. Once, when we'd failed to finish a plateful, they wrapped the whole thing up in foil and told us to bring the plate back later.
What else? Breads Etc (Unit 88) serves terrific brownies and the sort of hot chocolate to make small children swoon and, better still, shut up for a while. Etta's Seafood (Unit 46) offers huge plates of Caribbean seafood and has built a devoted following. The Caribbean takeaway Take Two Grill (right at the front) is one of the market's original businesses and one of the few jerk-chicken places in Brixton to cook over coals in a kettle drum rather than in the oven. Their sticky chicken wings, when available, should not be missed – a 10-napkin job at least.
Finally, for dessert finish-off at Laboratoria Artigianale del Buon Gelato, or LAB G (Unit 6) , where Giovanni Giovinazzo makes ice creams of uncommon lightness that recall the confections I have only previously found in the gelato palaces of Florence. Apparently he started making his fabulous salt-caramel ice cream because some big-haired beardy food critic who lives nearby asked him to, and now it's his biggest seller.
Be aware that almost all of these restaurants only take cash and few take bookings, so you may have to queue. Then again there are also lots of grocery and fabric shops where you can browse. Eventually, of course, the bitching will start – it always does with London food ventures. Some will complain that the soul of the market has gone, others that it has become closed off to locals. There may be rows between landlords and tenants. But for now it's thrilling and bringing lots of people to Brixton who might otherwise not think of coming here. That has to be a good thing.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place. Follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
