North London Food & Culture

Review: Cardigan Club Cafe

Why is it called Cardigan Club Cafe? And what on earth is French-Vietnamese Streetfood? We investigate - and discover at least one killer dish on the menu

Just wonderful: order the quinoa and chicken now. Photographs by Sarah Fox
Just wonderful: order the quinoa and sweet chilli chicken now. Photographs by Sarah Fox

Fortess Road is becoming the go-to strip for Kentishtowners in search of a nice little independent boozer or eatery. With Aces and Eights at one end and Ruby Violet at the other, The Cardigan Club has now cosied in on this rising foodie scene.

Entering the café is like walking into a playroom, complete with doll’s house and a pastel colour palette. Small rusting tins are dotted around the walls, a touch an interiors blog might go wild for. Tiny children’s cardigans hang everywhere, a nod to the name, which was inspired by the heritage of owner Minh Chi’s seamster parents. They came to Mile End as immigrants from Vietnam when she was a child and worked in a factory making cardigans. At lunch, they would all huddle in the local Vietnamese café, the heart of their community.

!!
“Like walking into a playroom, complete with doll’s house and a pastel colour palette”
If this sounds a bit cutesie any concerns about tweeness are stamped out by an over-riding breezy French café feel, all peeling paint, solid wood chairs and tables. The girliness is clearly not putting the guys off who sat around hunched over their big bowls of curries and noodles.

The menu is suitably simple, with four dishes to choose from. We ordered the ‘Riviera Sun’, which was a fairly standard bowl of vermicelli noodle salad with groggy shavings of peppered beef, which curled up at the ends because it was pretty well done. The noodles sat in a slightly too sweet dressing and the volume felt like a bit of a chore to get through, so we didn’t – and dug into our Keeno salad with sweet chilli chicken instead (see main pic).


LOCAL ADVERTISING


Cue flavour explosion. Strips of crunchy sweet pepper and fiery radish were tossed in quinoa and a honey mustard dressing, the sweetness perfectly setting off the savoury crispy-but-tender sweet chilli chicken. It’s been a week now and when I think back to that chicken, I go all glassy-eyed and mouth-watery. All these tasty textures were made even more interesting with a blob of zingy Asian-style salsa verde and a sprinkling of lightly fried ginger.

The Riviera Sun beef salad
Riviera Sun beef salad
Our forks fighting for the final mouthfuls, editor Stephen and I both agreed we haven’t tasted something as good as the this salad for a long time. It encompasses all that The Cardigan Club is doing well and differently; hearty home cooking made healthy. We washed our lunch down with two refreshing pressed juices, apple and ginger and orange, carrot and ginger.

Minh Chi is enjoying the challenge of sourcing local and London-based produce. The quinoa hails from Whole Foods, the fruit and veg bought from Fam, across the road and the meat; free range and organic from just over the river Peckham.

It’s the authentic Vietnamese flavours with a European twist that will set the place on the mao. Coffee boffs can pop another tick in the box as the café boasts beans from artisan Bristol based Extract, just like The Fields Beneath, making this Viet-Franco café the best place to grab a coffee this side of KT.

Attractive Fortess Rd exterior
Attractive Fortess Rd exterior
And you know what? I really couldn’t get that chicken out of my head, so I popped back on Saturday and ordered the Japanese curry with chicken to take away. The thigh and leg meat was cooked in the thick sauce, and wasn’t as memorably or crispy as my first experience, but the curry was fragrant with cardamon; and extremely moreish to the point where I found myself licking the carton clean.

So show up at lunch or it’s BYOB for dinner – yay! – and support this fledgling café, because if it’s cooking up these intriguing tastes already, I’m salivating at the prospect of its future flavours.

133 Fortess Rd NW5. Kentishtowner Rating 7/10 Meal for two with juices around £25

4 thoughts on “Review: Cardigan Club Cafe”

  1. We’re getting spoiled here in Kentish Town: Ruby Violet ice cream, Blue Moon Thai, Tufnell Park Tavern, Stingray pizza… I ate at Cardigan Club last night after reading this review. I thought the Market Rice was very good — if a little heavy on the rice. The traditional Vietnamese iced coffee was also lovely. I can’t wait to try the banh mi — aka Franco-Viet baguette — as a decent one has evaded me for 6 years now… I love Cardigan Club’s freshman effort. But they will have to expand their menu & serve proper hot food soon if they want to keep up with the quality of our other local heroes. That’s just my 2 cents.

Leave a Comment

4 thoughts on “Review: Cardigan Club Cafe”

  1. We’re getting spoiled here in Kentish Town: Ruby Violet ice cream, Blue Moon Thai, Tufnell Park Tavern, Stingray pizza… I ate at Cardigan Club last night after reading this review. I thought the Market Rice was very good — if a little heavy on the rice. The traditional Vietnamese iced coffee was also lovely. I can’t wait to try the banh mi — aka Franco-Viet baguette — as a decent one has evaded me for 6 years now… I love Cardigan Club’s freshman effort. But they will have to expand their menu & serve proper hot food soon if they want to keep up with the quality of our other local heroes. That’s just my 2 cents.

Leave a Comment

About Kentishtowner

The award-winning print and online title Kentishtowner was founded in 2010 and is part of London Belongs To Me, a citywide network of travel guides for locals. For more info on what we write about and why, see our About section.