She Loves London

Tag: The good bits

  • Where to get lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street SE1

    Where to get lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street SE1

    The good thing about having a job in London and periodically moving to work in another part of the city is that you end up with a focused and unnecessarily deep knowledge of small, sometimes good, usually mediocre places to eat near your office. 

    And mediocre isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a universal truth that your food standards have to drop between the hours of 12pm-2pm Monday to Friday, when consuming five pieces of lukewarm falafel from a corrugated paper box becomes not just acceptable but a daily routine you actively look forward to by 11am every day. 

    You know that paying £6-£8 for a halloumi wrap isn’t really acceptable but you become oddly attached to these cafes anyway; living only for loyalty card stamps and becoming gradually recognisable to the people behind the counters. Then one day, you’ll move office, and never go back ever again. 

    It’s not about José, or Hutong at the Shard, or Flour and Grape, and please note, there is no Padella on this list – not because they’re not lunch-worthy options, but because they’re not Work Lunch-worthy options. And that means you’ve got half an hour, £8.50 on your Monzo, and want your meal served within 5 minutes of ordering to takeaway, please, in a box.

    So here’s my knowledge that I give to you: where to get your lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street, SE1.

    1. Caphe House, Bermondsey Street

    Also known simply as “Vietnam” to, well, everyone in my old office, who at one point had a spreadsheet to competitively log and track who ordered the most Vietnamese food throughout the year. In winter, you’ll want the prawn Pho, and in summer, you’ll be gunning for the roast chicken or coconut chicken and rice, and those are the only things I can recommend because another universal truth of Work Lunch is that you will order exactly the same thing every time, and never diverge from your choice, and also feel a point of pride when in the last week the staff take your order and don’t have to ask for your name.

    114 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TX
    website

    2. Petit Bleu, Snowfields

    Don’t be fooled by the a) French name or b) the lengthy queue outside, this is not some sort of high end Bistro and there’s anything remotely French about these peri peri chicken wraps. What you need to know is that this place serves £3 meal deals and the biggest slab of lasagne I’ve ever laid eyes on for about £4.50, and a jacket potato for about £3.50, and it’s basically The Cheapest Place in SE1 to Get Lunch. You’ll just need to get there pretty early and prepare to get slightly nervous about standing that close to other people inside.

    42 Snowfields, SE1 3SU
    website

    3. B-Street Deli, Bermondsey Street

    Salad in a box. Chicken with salad in a box! Salmon with salad in a box! QUICHE WITH SALAD IN A BOX. Soup! Jacket potatoes! ALL OF IT, DELICIOUS, AND SERVED IN A BOX.

    88 Bermondsey Street, SE1
    website

    4. Eatalia Cafe, Bermondsey Street

    First up, a warning because I’m pretty sure this place subtly changes the position of their counters and tills every week just to fuck with us. Secondly, if you want soup and a decent portion of pasta and also ciabatta… filled… stuff? – look, I’m not a sandwich girl – and also arancini or maybe chilli con carne and rice, anyway it’s all about £6.50. And if you go there often enough and look particularly knackered after a long haul flight, they might offer you a free espresso. Man that counter moves every week, I swear it.

    94 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UB
    website

    5. Flat Iron Square

    Yeah, I know, not really near Bermondsey Street but a good one for when your mate on maternity leave comes to meet you for lunch and you’re not sure if the box of re-heated Bolognese you usually consume at this time of day is actually good or not, because who knows if Work Lunch food is actually good, or if we’re all just hungry and need to taste something apart from our own salty tears by 12pm; anything, anything at all, as long as it comes in a wrap? Anyway, Flat Iron Square has loads of quick food places, it’s a 10 minute fast trot away, and the pasta probably costs a quid more but is made fresh in front of you and FYI, it’s now called beef shin ragu. 

    64 Southwark St, London SE1 1RU
    website

    6. Borough Market

    Another token mention, this time for the world’s most famous mass tourist feeding ground and your Special Occasion Work Lunch. Borough Market is inevitable and more on this list to make up the numbers, because if you work in London Bridge you won’t be able to avoid it. Someone will suggest it, someone will laud it as the best place to go when a colleague visits from another office, you will go there to meet your mate who works nearby too. But the rest of the time, Borough Market is a strictly Friday, three times a year affair. Go early. Get the pad thai. Then get the hell back to the office. 

    7. Tortilla, Tooley Street

    Burritos are important to London and the office workers of this city take them very seriously. That’s my disclaimer, because I don’t want this recommendation to be an indication that Tortilla is The Best Burrito Place, because it’s not. Remember, this is Work Lunch, we’re dealing with a tiny radius of choices: and for Bermondsey Street your choice is Tortilla, where I once laughed at the miniscule size of the small burrito they were making me with such gusto that they gave it to me for free. (Chipotle / Daddy Donkey 4 lyf)

    90 Tooley Street, SE1 2TH
    website

    8. More London

    Pret. Leon. Itsu, they’re all… no, don’t. Oh god, eurgh, ignore this entry. I feel so dirty. Let’s move on.

    BONUS! where to sit and eat it:

    • Your desk, obviously
    • Tanner Street park
    • More London Place
    • Grassy bit by Tower Bridge 
    • There’s a nice concrete sitting area in front of the university opposite the Shard

    It goes without saying there are places – many places – I haven’t listed, probably because I haven’t eaten there. Also, since I last updated this post so many places have closed. So, over to you.

    Any tips? Leave ’em below.

    Updated February 2026

  • The Good Bits of London: Rowan’s, Finsbury Park

    The Good Bits of London: Rowan’s, Finsbury Park

    Image: Matt Brown

    We’re over by the pool tables, and I’m getting told off.

    And yeah, alright, I might have moved one of the balls a bit closer to the pocket because it didn’t go in the first time, because it’s 10.30pm on a Saturday night and I have a limited regard for the rules. But I’m saying ‘I didn’t do anything!’ anyway, and that’s when another person comes over and says ‘excuse me, can you help?’ and the security guard says ‘yeah what’s happening?’

    She points to her pool table where a bloke stands, annoyed, and says ‘if I pocket the red, and then the yellow straight afterwards, what happens then?’, so with a look that says I’m still watching he’s off to stop trouble erupting in another game, and I’m off the hook.

    We’ve put our names down to bowl, but it’s taking ages, so we head to the bar; someone orders shots. A group of older women to our left are sitting around a metal table beneath a single 60th birthday balloon. They’re literally unmoved by the DJ, who, it’s fair to say, is taking a “more is more” approach to the klaxon horn sound effect. He applies it liberally: over a Drake song, and a 90s RnB track, and a garage tune, and later in the night, to add emphasis to the words ‘a real good time’ on Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. 

    In front of the DJ booth a cross section of north London is forming, aged anywhere from 18 and up, all moving, dancing to the songs they know. Over the music are spontaneous cheers, and the sound of heavy balls thumping onto lanes and scattering pins.

    I assume that everyone in here is a Londoner because knowing about this place is the only common thread. Tourists don’t go to bowling alleys, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t go to this one. But they should because – I realise, as the night gets louder and later – there is nothing more typically London than this. 

    Here, opposite the tube station in an un-pretty bit of Zone 2, is a building that’s been there for years. Not much from the outside, not much once you’re in.

    And yet throughout the night it fills with, well, London: London in tight dresses and casual jeans, London with straightened hair, London with no hair, London with beards, and headdresses, and extensions, and caps; London with weaves. London in tracksuits, London in smart trousers, London buttoned shirts and t-shirts, London in trainers with patterned skirts and denim, and in boots and flats and heels.

    This place is let’s go out-out meets yeah, sounds good, I haven’t been bowling in ages; it’s dingy but job-done, it’s a search on the way in, it’s where’s your ID?

    It’s a chilled one but before you know it, it’s nearly 2am. The DJ is naked from the waist up, his shirt tied around his head. It’s Saturday night, but it’s a bowling alley, so how did this even happen? Alright London, you little curveball: I think it’s time to leave.

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  • 13 Nice Things To Do After Work Instead Of Going Straight Home

    13 Nice Things To Do After Work Instead Of Going Straight Home

    It’s been Quite A Week round here.

    A week in which every day at 5:30pm, when they’ve unlocked the doors and let us out of work, I’ve found myself swinging between two different moods:

    Mood 1: must go straight home and watch The Bodyguard and cook risotto

    Mood 2: must do something nice after work in order not to fall into a pit

    And while yes, one of these nights will inevitably end up being a heady mix of both of these things (drinking vast quantities of extortionately priced alcohol in a bar before going home, putting on The Bodyguard, and attempting to cook), it’s also nice to have a few slightly more wholesome “do something nice after work” options floating about. And lately I’ve found some good, cheap-ish things you can do after work in the evening, and most of them don’t cost very much. So here ya go:

    1. Go for a swim.

    Aside from anything else, hurling yourself into an outdoor pool or lido would really give your brain something else to think about, like do I still have toes, or how deadly is hypothermia. Otherwise, mate, the London Aquatics Centre over in the Olympic Park is very much the one. It’s indoor, very new, and it only costs a fiver for an adult (less if you’re bunking off work during the day).

    2. Do some heavy breathing on a mat, or something.

    The primary reason loads of people bang on about yoga is because thinking about your shitty day at work while standing on one leg with your arms in the air is really really hard to do. But yoga can be stupidly pricey in London, especially if you just want to do a one-off “today was awful, SOS” class. But the Mind Body app is good for finding cheap introductory classes near wherever you’re currently standing, fuming at the world. Also, a lot of London Borough Councils have really affordable community exercise projects: i.e these fitness classes are all £1 each for Hackney residents.

    3. Bury your face into a very good book (for free).

    Book shops are deffo the most calming places on earth – other day I went in Waterstone’s Islington and earwigged on a dad / daughter storytime session for a bit and it was mega therapeutic. But may I also remind you of the existence of libraries? And that you can still get books, audio books, and films instantly and for free in the year of our lord 2017? Find your local library on this page and voila! Free. Fucking. Books. 

    4. Borrow a dog.

    If you haven’t yet made a list of people whose dog you can befriend when the world feels like it’s going to end, that’s ok. Now is the time to start. Join this website, browse a selection of local dogs, and get to know their owners. If that feels like a reach, just sign up and look at photos of other people’s dogs. I mean, it works for me.

    5. Sit somewhere really busy and people watch.

    IMO, the worst bits of London are the really busy parts, unless you need distracting. In which case, they are the best place to plonk yourself down, put on music or a podcast, and watch an endless stream of people going about their miserable, daily hum drum existences all around you. The bit outside Kings Cross where the swing is? Excellent spot. Ditto Southbank, where buskers will cause you to reluctantly hum along to Ed Sheeran covers whether you like it or not.

    6. Go watch something you normally wouldn’t at the cinema.

    I’m a big fan of just rocking up to see whatever’s on at the cinema. But again, in London – this reaaaally isn’t very cheap.  Except recently I’ve found a lot of local cinemas do deals mid week to get you through the door. Like the Rio on Kingsland Road has Cheap Mondays, and £5 Tuesdays if you come in waving your Hackney library card.

    7. Send a friend something in the post.

    Alright, so this one might just be an excuse to go into a card shop and buy some decent stationery. But one bonafide foolproof way to feel better is to send someone an offensive / funny / stupid card, if for no other reason than you’ll probably make yourself laugh while you’re doing it. Fun fact: the postbox on Rosebery Avenue in Clerkenwell has a later 7.30pm pickup time. Don’t ask why I know this sort of stuff.

    8. Invest in a re-fillable bottle of wine.

    All hail the genius of Borough Wines. You buy an empty bottle (£2.50), fill it up with red, white, or rosé in the shop (£6.50), go outside, down it, then go straight back in and refill for £6.50. I jest, obviously. Street drinking’s for hobos. Buy two bottles and down them in the comfort of your own home instead.

    9. Take yourself somewhere for dinner.

    Because look: sometimes it helps to talk, and sometimes the last thing you want to do is discuss your awful day with anyone. Enter The Infatuation’s piece recently on places to eat if you’re rolling solo.

    10. Find a midweek gig happening that night.

    The absolute wonder of London is that you will find live music somewhere, somehow, on any given night of the week. And usually without getting advance tickets. Try the Jazz Cafe in Camden, The Lexington, Birthdays, and the Shacklewell Arms. Or have a scout on Dice app or Resident Advisor.

    11. Visit a friend on the other side of London.

    Part of the reason we all get so fed up is because we’re doing the same journeys and routines every day. So give your mate on the other side of town a ring and go see how astonishingly happy everyone in west London is.

    12. Get up high.

    You know what you need? Perspective, mate. Bit of perspective. The View from the Shard is a bit expensive (nice), but you can get half way up for free just by… getting in the lift and having a drink in Hutong. Alternatively, get on the Dangleway, or climb up any of these.

    13. Go for late tea and cake.

    A lot of Soho’s cafes are open late, and are a very good place to go with a book and have a cuppa. Yum Chaa, Balans Soho Society Cafe, even Caffe Nero on the corner of Frith Street is open til 2am during the week. So, there’s that. Here are more places that aren’t the pub.

    Where do you go after work if you don’t fancy going straight home?