A tour of some of the best places in South Kensington

Intro

It can be incredibly easy to end up spending all of your life just sitting in the library and only sampling JCR, SCR (if you’re lucky enough to be let in), Library Café, and, of course, all of the departmental cafés. Thing is, we happen to live around a whole load of amazing cafés. So sit back, relax, in the Library Café (obviously), chow down on your jacket potato with beans and cheese, and just pour over this. By which we mean pour over it in a reading way, don’t pour your beans over it. You may just find your new favourite restaurant, and discover that it’s right on your doorstep. As, let’s face it, you’ll end up living in the library at some point in your degree (both shudder as we remember the first term of third year chemistry).

Rocca di papa 73 Old Brompton Road

This is our top pick if you want a sophisticated birthday dinner with friends. The menu caters to everyone’s tastes and budgets, ranging from basic pizza and pasta dishes starting at around £5 to more elaborate meat dishes for up to £15. The best part of it, however, is that everyone gets to enjoy the Mediterranean décor and friendly staff, meaning you feel whisked away from any English winter blues in a second. It really is a great atmosphere, sometimes you worry that you’ll get a ridiculous bill on your desk... Oh, and we should also add that if your timetable allows you to take a long lunch, Rocca gives all students a complimentary plate of bread when they eat there at lunchtimes. This isn’t even “soup with bread” one piece of bread style bullshit going on, it’s a whole plate.

Da Mario 45 Gloucester Road

Kids! This is where you favorite pizza chain began! (Shame on you if you are thinking of Pizza Hut right now.) Yes, Mr Mario is the guy that created pizza for pizza express. So, if you’re the kind of person who likes to pay a little bit more for something more authentic, then Da Mario is somewhere you should go. It’s dangerously close to college and is a great place to fill up of food after a long day in the lab. There’s also some pretty epic interior decorations going on, such as the great cartoon of Mario.

Sole Luna Pizza and Pasta 3 Old Brompton Road

We spent years walking past this place barely noticing it was there. It has just “Pizza and Pasta” written in blue neon lights on it, as if that’s its name, which makes you just blank it. It’s just by the entrance to South Ken station and easy to rush by. However, definitely stop by sometime and check it out. Huge pizzas, even huger dishes of pasta, a slightly small but incredible garlic bread starter dish and friendly waiters / waitresses. It’s not the cheapest place to go, so maybe save it for a special occasion, or better still, suggest going there when your parents come to visit.

Caffe Forum 146 Gloucester Road

With £5 pizzas from 5pm-7pm everyday this is a great place to get some cheap after-college pizza and read over your lecture notes. However, it is an even better place to get some cheap after-college pizza and hang out with friends. With a mega chilled out vibe and lots more on offer than just pizza (quiche – which is amazing and comes with a salad that has a dressing that must contain addictive drugs, salads, cakes, pasta dishes, and loads more) Caffe Forum rates highly on our cool scale. (You also get a free croissant if you buy a coffee in the morning... or a free coffee if you buy a croissant... something like that. We research well) The mochas also deserve special praise for being outstanding.

Le Pain Quotidien 17 Exhibition Road

This is on that row of shops that includes a few cafes. It’s another one of those places that you just walk past everyday and think “I’ll definitely go to that at some point, probably”, then, inevitably, you don’t bother to actually go in the end. Here’s the part that will make you think “nah, can’t be arsed”: it’s a little bit pricey. However, it is really worth it. They do these open faced sandwich things, called “tartines” apparently (yes, we are a bit uncultured and so had to look that up). The roasted vegetable one is particularly nice. The grilled goat’s cheese and roasted vegetable toasted tartine (we feel very sophisticated saying this as if we knew it all along) is really great. Maybe that’s because I (Tim) have an almost perverse love of goat’s cheese, or it could be the great salad dressing that they give you. We know that we’ve been banging on about salad dressing way too much in this article, but, honestly, salad is just leaves and shit without the dressing: in other words, it’s the dressing that makes it. The atmosphere, well, put it this way: it’s very much somewhere you can sit in and forget all about quantum mechanics in. We recently found out, with a pang of horror, that this is actually a chain, but oh well, it’s still worth it.

Med Kitchen 17 Exhibition Road

This place is niiiiiiice. And as expected, some plates come at a price. However, we’ve found a way to enjoy the 5* environment without having to max out your overdraft. Go here for a pot of tea and chips. Chips are £2.95 and you get a big wooden bowl full. They’re proper thin fries, and are really great with meals. This sounds odd, but the reason that we even tried this place was that we always see loads of people with amazing looking platefulls of chips. It took some courage (and a long day of work, and therefore lowered regard for our bank balances) to go in and try it. Amazingly, tea is £1.95 for a pot – cheaper than Starbucks. If you’ve got a spare afternoon and want a change of scenery, we highly recommend that you hang out here for a bit. The three egg omelettes are worth a try. That, chips, and tea is a pretty boss dinner.

Best of the rest

Other mentions go to: Café Nero on Gloucester road, for the comfiest sofas in town. It’s the best Nero that we have ever seen. We shouldn’t keep banging on about sofa quality, but honestly these are massive brown leather sofas that you can just sink into. Chopstix next to South Ken station, for well-priced greasy Chinese that gives you that really content feeling for about 5 minutes and then makes you feel a bit sick, Nando’s on Gloucester road for a trustworthy ‘I can’t be bothered to cook tonight’ quick fix, GBK for good burgers at a good price (the closest cheap eat for everyone in Evelyn Gardens), and, sorry Byron, but they have much more choice, especially for veggies. The Sandwich Shop on Gloucester Road when you get bored of eating food from the Library Café, and Wafflemeister again near South Ken station, for when you get that waffle urge.