December 2024. Camberwell.
Stuck in London for a while, allegedly due to an incident in Royston (it’s always Royston, isn’t it ?), I’d headed on the first train south from St Pancras to Loughborough Junction, your hop-off for Kings Hospital, where my Father-in-law has been a regular visitor this last year (as well as an even more famous Wetherspoons).
I was heading, unexpectedly to a Monday lunchtime tick in Camberwell, always a hard place to get to grip with. An hour to walk the 1.6 miles to the Grove House and back, have a pint and hipster sarnie, and stop suddenly to take pics of shops. Should be fine.
A joyous mix of Caribbean cafes, junk and random art,
this is South-east London at its purest, intermittently switching from grandeur to garbage.
Tucked in the back streets off Love Walk, the Grove House is quite grand,
and unexpectedly busy at lunch in a world of 4pm openers.
That may be due to giving a residency to Mondo Sando,
anointed “best sandwich in Britain” by some bloke in the Evening Standard (yeah, I know).
I can’t claim a GBG tick for a sandwich, though I did once claim a cream tea in Ilfracombe, so had a pint of Southwark Best; you guess the NBSS.
I suspect if all the other customers (couples. students, mums and toddlers) had been on the cask, rather than orange juice, lattes and milk it might have squeaked to a 3. Never have the 1st pint of the week.
The soundtrack veers from Ocean Colour Scene to Paolo Nutini, not much of a veer, and I take refuge in a back room with some of Wrexham Industrial Estate‘s finest.
And when I return, the music has veered to classic territory,
and I lose myself for a moment before remembering it’s been half an hour waiting for a sandwich and I need to be back at Loughborough Junction in 14 minutes.
So, I don’t get to enjoy my Natale at the table, squashing it into a compact ball to be devoured 40 minutes later on a Kings Cross platform.
So, when I tell you that even in that lukewarm, diminished form it was still the best sandwich I’ve eaten in the UK (apart from the Cheese and Onion crisp and salad cream sandwich I made myself in 1975) you should take it as some sort of recommendation, I guess.
retiredmartin 