Peckham Bazaar

Having read this review and having eaten at a lot of restaurants with my Greek friend Art, I knew we had to try Peckham Bazaar, the alleged 'best Greek food in town', together.  So we head South one Saturday lunchtime for a belated Christmas meal with high hopes.

I'd never been to Peckham before, we wandered off of Rye Lane towards Consort Road, wondering if we'd taken a wrong turn, when we were confronted with the smell of BBQ wafting down the street.  We followed the smell and arrived at the small casual dining room.  The smell was so welcoming and the room abuzz.

Everything on the menu sounded amazing, we ordered a bottle of Greek white for around the £20 mark which was nice, crisp and fruity.  Food arrived pretty swiftly and was every bit as good as expected.

 

My starter was harissa marinated chicken wings with kohlrabi and pomegranate (£6.50). The grilled meat was smokey and succulent and the accompanying sauce was great.  The salad gave crunch and coolness, with a smattering of herbs, really lovely.

Art's marinated beetroot with baked feta and skordalia (£5.50) was incredible.  Whatever they'd done to this feta, I want to know how to do it. It was a relatively small portion but the quality of the ingredients and the cleverness of flavour and texture pairing made this the dish of the day, excellent starters.

My main of lamb neck fillets, with artichokes, broad beans and avgolemono (£16.50) was a mixed bag.  The meat was beautifully cooked, but it's a tough cut, my cutlery struggled to get through it in places.  The avgolemono sauce was a revelation.  Unfortunately for Sven, who I met later for dinner at MeatMarket, it was packed with garlic and stayed with me for the rest of the day, ha.  It's a lemony eggy sauce.  I was sad to have 1 solitary broad bean in the dish, substituted for new potatoes which were a fine swap.  The artichoke was good.  I was happy.

We both oohed and aahed over the beauty of Art's main course, the globe courgette stuffed with rice, pine nuts, herbs and sheeps yoghurt (£11.50).  Look how pretty is it!  It tasted as good as it looked and we were both content after finishing our mains.

Would have been nice to have been offered dessert, we weren't.  The service was charming and as we were full up we were happy to leave it at the 2 courses, but we were left to it after our dishes were cleared away.  We probably outstayed our welcome actually, being the last of the lunch diners to leave at gone 4pm.

If I find myself in the area, I will certainly pop in again.  And I hope they do exceptionally well, not that they need any help there, as the place is already a roaring success.  We paid around £30 a head for some really brilliant food.  They also got the seal of approval from Art.

Peckham Bazaar
119 Consort Rd
Peckham
SE15
8/10