Please note, West Kitchen has now closed. Time Out Food editors, March 2019.
Like Frank’s Café before it, you reach West Kitchen – a polished organic wine bar and Californian-fusion joint near the Overground station – by trudging up the stairwell of what was Peckham’s multi-storey car park (now repurposed as the fancy Peckham Levels complex). The food is excellent. There was a dinky bowl of kimchi, the usual cabbage leaves bulked out with kohlrabi and carrot: it was sharp, salty, fiery and delicious. A dish of smoky, charred tenderstem broccoli was lifted with a subtly herbaceous pesto and a slathering of coconut yogurt, a simple combo that was alarmingly good. Ancho (chilli) roasted squash was warming and sweet, but even better was the accompanying pile of leaves with zesty dressing made from umeboshi (Japanese pickled fruit).
The hits kept on coming. Sea bream tiradito was a painterly little assemblage of almost translucent slivers of raw fillet. Flecked with black garlic, chilli, micro herbs and crispy shallots, it was a plate that even fish-haters would coo over; a mouthful of food for £7, mind, but a blinding one. Even a worthy-sounding dessert of baked beetroot layered with buckwheat crumble, a red wine jus and thyme was a surprise hit.
A caveat: the appeal of the space is limited. It’s chilly and feels overexposed to the bar next door, with the weird oppressiveness of a barely converted car park. One for a sunny day, then.