Mary's Cafe

The Best Old-School Caffs in South London | Eater London

"Beyond Burgess Park, where Camberwell dissolves into Walworth, there’s a few historical places where people hang out: a 1930s pub, a century-old pie and mash shop, and Mary’s Cafe, which opened four years before man landed on the moon. The place has an eclectic, old-fashioned menu, with unusual options like duck eggs, spotted dick, and an Irish breakfast, which includes white pudding and excludes baked beans. Like a Scottish breakfast, the Irish at Mary’s is a reminder that fried breakfasts are really just a whole lot of pork, fried and arranged on a plate. It’s worth eating all that pork at Mary’s because of the quality of its meat. The white pudding is a hockey puck of oaty, bloodless fat with a hint of offal; the sausages are real too — plump, herb-speckled things like the ones at E Pellicci and Regency Cafe. At lunchtime, the steak and kidney pie comes softened beneath a puddle of gravy, its pastry casing filled to the brim with tender chunks of beef." - Isaac Rangaswami