The Begging Bowl serves Thai street food, and the modest sized menu (always a good thing in my book – I don’t like too much choice) is colour coded into four different price brackets, from £6.25 to £14.75, rather like Yo! Sushi. We started with two Thai lemonades which Joe found a bit too sweet but I very much enjoyed. We then ordered the set lunch menu – three dishes and rice for £12.50 each. A cured prawn salad was served alongside fish cakes with sweet chilli dipping sauce. The salad was the highlight of the meal – lightly cured pieces of seafood tossed with plenty of herbs, chilli, and chewy pieces of fried garlic (I think…). The fishcakes were slightly disappointing, heavy on the potato, light on an unidentifiable fish, and over relying on the sauce for flavour, but they did have a great texture.
Joe then had sweet soy marinated pork ribs, which looked incredible, and he very much enjoyed, gleefully licking the sticky sauce off his fingers at the end of the meal. As this was still within Lent (I gave up red meat and the Daily Mail side bar of shame), I swapped these for sweet potato and Thai basil fritters, which were lovely and crisp, and served with the same sauce as the fish cakes. Rather than the generic bowl of sticky msg-laden substance you often get, it had more of a light syrup consistency, and was served with floating pieces of cucumber, coriander, chilli and red onion. It was sweet, but not sickly, and had a good, back-of-the-throat kick to it. We were also given a bowl of jasmine rice, and a bamboo basket of unnecessary sticky rice – while it was perfectly nice, I think you only really need one type of rice with a meal.
We finished up with a pudding to share, taking a punt on a pandanas leaf granita with lemon grass syrup, pomelo, physillas and rambutan. No, I didn’t know what half those things were either. Pandanas is a dark green leaf with an aromatic, herby flavour to it, and the granita was a cleansing end to the meal, especially when soaked in a mouthful of sweet, pungent, lemongrass syrup. However, the accompaniments: physillas, a tomato looking, orange tasting fruit; pomelo, a small citrus fruit; and rambutan, lychee like in texture, but lacking any of the flavour punch of its sister, were all underwhelming, and when paired together, slightly odd. Despite continual protests from Joe that he wasn’t convinced by the dessert, he did keep eating it, as I did I, and I grew to like it more and more with every taste.
Our meal wasn’t perfect, but it was very enjoyable. The restaurant itself is a lovely light, casual space, with an orange, green and brown striped wooden wall at the back (that reminded me a little of The Rum Kitchen), and friendly staff. Our set lunch was fairly good value, but I did feel the portions were a bit on the small size, especially as I think Joe’s bowl of ribs was meant for the two of us to share (it wouldn’t have), and although we left full, I wasn’t quite satisfied. We will however be back, Joe probably sooner than I, and it was a good start to my South East London explorations.
After we left we picked up coffees at the delightful Anderson & Co just across the road. They serve excellent Square Mile coffee and I loved the lights and delicious looking cakes. Joe and I are already planning to come back for brunch sometime soon.
An error has occurred! Please try again in a few minutes