Vegging in Brixton: our meat free recommendations

By Neil Sammonds

Tins of Ma Ling ful beans (fava beans or brown broad beans) kept me alive on a pittance when I moved from Africa to Loughborough Junction in 1996, so no apologies for them featuring twice in this piece!

Shawl café, at the foot of the Rec’s steps, wins for value for money (VFM) sit-down lunch. A large wooden bowl of mashed ful beans – pronounced ‘fool’ rather than, ahem, ‘foul’ – cooked with onion, garlic, tomato, cumin, olive oil and sprinkled to taste with crushed green chilli, along with heated up pita to scoop up the heavenly mush, will fill you for £3.50. An adventurous alternative is to have a sheet of injera – large rounds of a sour spongy flatbread made from either wheat or the high-altitude gluten free growing grass seeds called teff – with spinach, beetroot, lightly spiced potato, cabbage and other toppings, for £5.50. A cup of strong locally roasted Ethiopian coffee outside in the sun will then perk you back up.

Ali Baba’s Cave is number one for a VFM lunch on the go. For three quid the delightful Salim will make you one of his bulging wraps, named Veggie Dream – with mixed beans, spinach and hummus – or Veggie Heaven – with hummus, those magic ful beans, and his version of tabbouleh (parsley, tomato and onion). Splash on chilli sauce to taste. A Yemeni with a Somali grandma who lived mostly in Dubai and learnt his cooking from the Egyptian and Lebanese workers there, Salim’s stall graces our Station Road from Tuesday to Saturday.

The best range of meals has to be at Alkarmel at 95 Landor Road, which is the sole dedicated vegetarian restaurant for miles around. Its location on Brixton’s borders with Clapham and Stockwell is no excuse for it taking me over a year to discover its fantastic existence. Mel and Karim produce a swathe of options for all tastes from 7am breakfast fry-ups to late night dinners, with corkage available. Soups, lasagne, lentil and sweet potato shepherd’s pie, mixed beans with jerk sauce and much more, for a mere £4.50 max! I love them all the more for giving a discount to hospital staff and patients.

While Franco Manca’s veggie pizzas always please, my single favourite meal is at the mighty Khan’s on Brixton Water Lane, which is loved by almost everyone I know. At least fortnightly and even on consecutive nights I get a fix of divine spiced pumpkin masala, tarka daal (three types of lentils and garlic with coriander, chilli and turmeric) and exquisite saag paneer (white cheese cubes in creamed spinach), a hot garlic naan bread and some rice, to be eased along with a BYO bottle of red or a mango lassi drink. Typical for London curry houses it is Pakistani-owned and mostly Bangladeshi-staffed, and Faisal’s team will serve with knowledge, respect and warmth.

When outsiders came south wanting me to guide them to a taste of the Caribbean there were three options: lie, say the best places were closed; throw my toys out of the pram saying they had no good veggie options so let’s go elsewhere; or play the martyr and fork okayish rice and peas while mates licked their jerk sauce stained fingers. And then came Fish Wings n Tings, which wins a special paradigm shift award for best Caribbean veggie food! Already highly respected for Trinidadian Brian’s signature codfish fritters and so on, the word needs to spread that we veggies are (very nearly) equally happy there. On my virgin visit I was in martyr mode, said I wasn’t hungry, then perfect host Brian proudly talked me through his vegetable roti brick of love. A great holistic mixture of just-right cooked pumpkin and potato, chick peas, green beans, red pepper and sweet-chili-like tamarind sauce I wolfed it down. Even when genuinely not hungry I now go back for more!