Market Place Food Hall Peckham

Peckham’s Best Restaurants | Where to Eat in Peckham and Peckham Rye | Eater London

"Everything comes full circle eventually. The first food hall in London was in Oriental City, on the city’s outskirts, where Chinese, Malaysian and Japanese stalls all competed in harmony until it was shut down in 2008. It took another 10 years for the concept to come back, this time in the centre of London, in places that command the highest real estate prices in the city. Now it’s come to the inner city: first an abortive attempt at Nag’s Head last year, then Market Place, the first in what promises/threatens to be a London wide chain. Although partially completed before the pandemic, it is now fully operational with around ten new stalls and a bar. Highlights include Bang Bang Kitchen, a Ghanaian stall expert at protein cooking, with fatty turkey suya, and, best of all, chicken ball suya, a cross between West African barbecue and an Ikea meatball. At Full Bowl Sya Wang Kee, a brother and sister team have brought Hong Kong’s obsession with Hawaiian food to Peckham, with rice bowls, and more vertiginously, rice sandwiches, wrapped in nori and encasing fillings like “spam and egg” or “pork chop, cheese and mystery mustard,” a kind of demented kimbap. At Tianjin Dumplings, the dumplings themselves are fairly skippable, but an egg and chive pie makes a formidable crispy snack, and the owner puts Ruffles crisps in his jianbing, displaying a dedication to hedonism. It’s too soon to say if Market Place is a good thing for the area or not, but once it finds its toes it may offer a more accurate reflection of Peckham than curated spaces usually allow." - Jonathan Nunn