If there was ever a case for the veracity of nominative determinism, it could be Deptford. Meaning “deep ford”, historically Depftord has been brutally shaped by intense bouts of economic weather: once overflowing with prosperity — and then utterly neglected once the banks had burst. Named a Royal Dockyard in 1513 by Henry VIII, Deptford flourished until competition of a war economy saw it left behind, descending into poverty — a process repeated in both world wars.
Yet today, Deptford flourishes once more. Through all its mistreatment, perhaps even because of it, Deptford’s closely-knit sense of community is righteously palpable; the throngs of the weekly market, the energy of the post-service Methodist Church, the conviviality of restaurants and bars that spill out onto the street in summer and swaddle you in winter.
Deptford almost has a Cornish-like sense of identity and pride. Waters run deep in here and, over time, have built a myriad of bridges, most of which end up in a place to eat and or drink, imprinted with a distinct sense of self. It’s in the DNA. The following is a collection of places to eat and drink that embody the charm of Deptford in their own way.
Pubs and bars
Big J’s Biltong Bar
Skirting the line between sentimentality and unbridled kleptomania, the walls of Big J’s are a mosaic of beer mats and nik naks, among the glow of tasselled lampshades and the clamour of a good time. You’d be forgiven for thinking that London’s first-ever biltong bar is gimmick-driven, but it’s an unequivocal labour of love. As the name might suggest, Big J’s stocks a range of biltong (£5 per 100g), in original, garlic or properly smouldering chilli, with the same in droëwors – biltong’s loose-hewn answer to the likes of kabanos that’s all snap and chew, for £2 each. Pints are reasonable; their gin & tonics bracingly crisp, to be enjoyed on the high tops or the pleasingly broken-in Chesterfield at the back. If you decide you love the biltong (you will), then head round the corner to the shop where there’s additional stock like tubs of tallow and pork scratchings.
Bar: 29 Deptford High Street, SE8 4AD; Biltong Shop: 1A Douglas Way, SE8 4AG, @bigjsbiltong
Bluethroat
Nestled under a railway arch, Blutethroat’s Deptford location is a cooling cocktail haven from the midday sun and a cosy, sultry sipping spot in the evening. Their menu is the sort that can seize you with indecision or equally have you tapping assertively on another to order on repeat. Tastefully drawing from a global influence, Bluethroat deftly negotiate between originality and familiarity, with the likes of their plum picante made with plum saké; an incisive yuzu negroni or their “pink tickler”, which tastes like a pick ‘n’ mix distilled. Happy Hour every day from 5pm-7pm, all cocktails £8, £12 otherwise.
Arch 2, Deptford Station, Deptford High Street, SE8 4NS, bluethroatbar.com
The Dog & Bell
The pub equivalent of a chocolate box cottage, The Dog and Bell is a slice of the country in Deptford. Cheerfully swarmed in the summer, it’s home to a cider and sausage festival, which sees a wall of boxed and draught, and a litany of fat snags from Guinness and Irish beef, Gloucester Old Spot and merguez, to name but a few. Deeply cosy and twinkling with fairy lights in the colder months, the bar is practically held in place by the sheer weight of their homemade pork pies, with Sunday roasts not being fancy, but verging on half the price elsewhere in London. Guinness and Murphy’s flow freely between young and old; it’s Deptford’s much less frenetic answer to The Devonshire.
116 Prince Street, SE8 3JD, @the_dog_and_bell
Little Nan’s
Ostensibly inspired by what Liberace must’ve seen on the most kitsch LSD trip of his life, Little Nan’s Bar inadvertently became Deptford’s first ever cocktail bar. Initially intending to serve beer and cider, owner Tristan Scutt set out to honour his late Nan Jojo, adorning it with all her furniture, ornaments and heirlooms. Using her crockery as vessels for quirky cocktails (starting from £11), their popularity caused Scutt to make them the main attraction, transforming Little Nan’s into a technicolour play on millennial nostalgia. Try the Lord DCI Burnside with dry gin, root ginger, ginger beer and Deptford market lemon; the Mr. Motivator with gin, Campari, fresh lemon and lime, topped with Bermondsey tonic; an Expresso (not a typo) Nantini using Werther’s Original vodka, vodka foam and crushed Werther’s. Sarnies are decidedly on-brand, starting from £6; Uncle Albert’s fish finger sarnie, Little Mum’s chicken surprise and Cousin Akjen’s falafel sarnie. Scutt has cultivated an empire of venues, but Little Nan’s 2.0 is just around the corner if the OG is packed.
Deptford High Street, SE8 3NU, littlenans.co.uk
Restaurants
The Watergate
Gordon McGowan is another titan of Deptford’s food and drink scene, having previously owned The Stockton. Primarily known for opening Buster Mantis, famous for its Jamaican Sunday roasts served with rice and peas and blessed use of Wray and Newphews, The Watergate is McGowan’s wine bar offering. At the quieter end of the street, The Watergate is all dapple and sunlight in the summer and a cosy amber glow in winter, doing natural wines and cocktails and therefore small plates, but they’re actually interesting, at least. Previous visits have yielded cornbread studded with fresh sweetcorn and slicked with chipotle butter; pork cheek cooked to a sigh in a broth lurking with apricot, pearl barley, pearl onions, peas and fistfuls of mint or goat’s cheese-stuffed courgette flower tempura, laced with truffle honey. Fancy dessert? Well, fear not — the deep-fried Oreos remain a constant. Dishes range from around £9 to £15.
5-9 Watergate Street, SE8 3HR, thewatergate.co.uk
Klose and Soan
Owners Matt Klose packed in the music industry and started a catering company with Sam Soan (Moro, Canton Arms, The Camberwell Arms, Frank's Cafe), and initially only supplied a food offering for the former Winemakers wine bar. Eventually, the two ended up taking over the space, turning it into an elegantly understated restaurant while maintaining the quietly substantial wine offering. The panisse is an enduring highlight; crisp cuboids holding a sweet chickpea silt, drifted in Grana Padano and blotted with fermented chilli. There’s a textbook steak frite with a vibrant chimichurri; pearly sea bream with a classic sauce vierge and confit fennel. However, the chocolate nemesis deserves an honourable mention — a wedge of cocoa-derived dark matter that is barely stable within; a salve to any breakup. Dishes from around £5 to £25.
209 Deptford High Street, SE8 3NT, kloseandsoan.co.uk
Marcella
Sister to Peckham’s Artusi, Marcella sits on Deptford High Street with no fanfare. It exudes a quiet confidence that has you beating your chest by osmosis, with a menu charged with the exuberance of Mediterranean sun and the kind of Nonna-grade satisfaction that lovingly handmade pasta can bestow. While the menu changes in allegiance with the seasons as it should, there are the likes of thickly-cut, quenching chunks of lightly-dressed Vesuvio tomato; tagliatelle slicked in lamb broth with anchovies and capers; brined ox tongue with giardineria, finished with lemon sorbet with the breathtaking freshness of a plunge pool. Along with a great wine list, Sunday offers three courses for £29 from noon-4pm and half portions of pasta, should you want them for some reason. Dishes on the regular menu go from around £9 to £25
165A Deptford High Street, SE8 3NU, marcella.london
Viet Rest
The walls at Viet Rest are reminiscent of those found in the kids' play areas of NHS waiting rooms of the 90s; a wraparound mural by self-taught artist Vu Kim Thanh, depicting Ha Long Bay and the world's largest cave, Son Doong. Deep bowls of pho make Viet Rest an apothecary in the winter, especially the beef with golden slivers of fried garlic, while the green papaya salad (£11) is a blessed defibrillator in the heat of summer, with the option of adding chicken, prawns or beef jerky. Bánh xèo (£11-£13) — crispy rice pancakes, neon with turmeric, the size of a folded hubcap, are generously filled. The barbecue goat bún bò xào (£13.50) is smoky as it is supple, alongside cooled vermicelli noodles and a pile of fresh herbs, along with a dish of the liquid electricity that is nước chấm. The menu also features dishes that would make Bourdain bite his lip and light another cigarette, such as canh tiết rau hẹ (£5) — a raw blood pudding bobbing in broth and turfed with herbs, or cháo lòng (£10); blood sausage in rice porridge. Freshly made coconut water, lemon iced tea and of course, Vietnamese iced coffee are all available, too (£3-£4.50)
113 Deptford High Street, SE8 4NS, vietrestltd.co.uk
Honey’s
Walls the colour of her turmeric-imbued patties, lined with loaves of hardough behind a cabinet filled with drinks like sorrel and ginger, Mystic Water and Supermalt among others, Honey’s is everything you want in a Caribbean spot. The curry goat has been properly doted on, with Honey removing a fair bit of the bone before serving, dishing up chunks of meat simmered to a whimper, almost exclusively. A regular portion of this with rice and peas, a festival the size of a cucumber and a patty comes in at £13. Interestingly, there’s also the option to swap out for jollof rice instead. Frozen bottles of Bigga come from a backroom stash for sweltering regulars in the summer heat — Honey’s affection for customers is second only to her zero tolerance for misbehaving. Truly, the matriarch of Deptford. Be good.
87 Deptford High Street, SE8 4AA, no website, but open 10am-8pm every day
M & D
Red and orange striping, banquette seats, walls framed with early 2000s screensaver-grade images, and a TV showing only ever sports, M&D's aesthetic is a composite of diner nostalgia. Laminated pictures of menu items are displayed above a glass cabinet counter filled with drinks, behind which is a bamboo screen where everything is made to order at excruciatingly reasonable prices. Eight salmon or prawn maki are £5, with 11-piece platters for £11. The molten silk of takoyaki comes in at £5 for four; a comforting katsu selection of chicken, prawn and pumpkin is £9, while the grilled duck is £12. Hearty bowls of yakisoba, fried udon and ramen range between £9 and £12, and bento boxes are £17 across the board. M&D epitomises the “no-frills” approach — it’s not the highest end but would never claim to be, but utterly satisfies those cravings.
117 Deptford High Street, SE8 4NS, manddjapanesedeptford.co.uk
TT Breakfast
Subverting classic British fare via Nigeria, TT Breakfast brings a rib-sticking twist to the most important meal of the day. The Full Nigerian (£15) characterises the main thrust of TT’s mission: Nigerian-style eggs teeming with onion, bell peppers and tomato, akara (bean fritter), burnished, fudgy chunks of plantain, seasoned honey bean, a hunk of Agege bread and a pot of their signature pepper sauce. Indomie noodles come draped with an omelette. The £7.95 All Day Breakfast comes with boiled yam, Nigerian-style eggs, fried plantain, seasoned honey beans and pepper sauce. That said, set meals include the likes of a Fried Box (£11.95) containing Cajun fried yam, plantain and Nigerian-style eggs with pepper sauce or the Risky Burger (£6.50) — the Nigerian-style omelette in Agege bread. Wash it all down with a luminous Nigerian Fanta (£3). And yes, they have puff puff (£2).
Arch 11, 4 Deptford Market Yard, SE8 4BX, ttsbreakfast.com
Jazu
Formerly The Stockton, with its small plates and listening bar setup, Jazu is what cynics might consider to be a Hackney implant. Run by three friends, it’s the culmination of three years of pop-ups: Rosie Robertson oversees front of house and design; Scott Addison runs the bar, offering a selection of irreverent and original cocktails that go heavy on the agave, starting at £11. Food used to be the work of Jimmy Robertson (ex Elliot's, Lardo, Crispin and Norfolk’s Michelin-starred Neptune), providing the entire wall of vinyl. Lately, however, Jazu has been home to residencies instead, proving a knack for finding outstanding talent.
2 Deptford High Street, SE8 4AF, jazudrinks.com
The Communist
You might think that The Yellow Bittern had the market cornered when it comes to a communist engaging in capitalism unironically, but The Communist beat them to it a year earlier — with snappier branding, too. Self-confessed communist, Armani Vatausever, 63, owns the kebab shop with his daughter, Sinem with Mustafa Ali, who is the chef. The menu is a list of standard kebab shop items renamed to commemorate socialist figureheads: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, among others. But most importantly, all come just as they’d want to be remembered — with spicy rice or fries. Dishes from £7, most in the low teens.
492 New Cross Rd, London SE14 6TJ, thecommunist.co.uk
JinJiang
JinJiang offers a both Sichuan dishes including dry pots of squid tentacles (£15.90), crab (£18) and pig intestine (£14.90); clay pots of chicken and tofu with salted fish or beef brisket with dried bean curd (£14.90, £15.90); wontons appearing like walnuts vacuum-packed in silk (£8.90); and hard-fried sweet & sour sea bass (£32.90). There’s a Cantonese offering, too, where the crispy roast pork belly is piled higher than perhaps anywhere else in London for £15.50. Of course, there’s char siu and duck along with soy chicken. Get the black fungus, bursting with coriander (£7.80) — its toothsome squeak carries a garlicky vinaigrette — and the lemon honey tea (£3.40), which comes pre-packaged and, with a thorough shake, gives it the head of a Tetley’s pint. It’s scythingly tart, softly sweet and refreshingly bitter, all in equal measure. Be prepared to groak at the owner’s formidable family meals enjoyed across the table from you — you will not find them on the menu.
36 Deptford Broadway, SE8 4PQ, jinjiangonline.co.uk
