Dining Out 001: The Laundry and Forza Wine
Lunch in Brixton and Peckham.
A restaurant question I get asked a reasonable amount, by stressed out people who have inevitably left their planning to the last minute, is this: “Where the fuck can I take my mom?”
Obviously moms are people and so they are each unique flowers (and for the avoidance of doubt here, I am saying “mom” not “mum” because I am, like Ozzy Osbourne and Brum the motorcar before me, from Birmingham). Generally, however, when I think about places that moms tend to like, there are patterns, so I’ve established a few loose criteria: comfy, airy surroundings, prettily presented but largely unfussy dishes, and, importantly, cocktails with a decent whack of booze. As such, when my own mom came from Birmingham to London to visit me a few weeks ago – a belated birthday day out for her – I was really excited to be invited to eat at The Laundry, which very much meets my all-important Mom Standards.
The Laundry is on the site of an old Edwardian laundry on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton, and when we visited, groups ranged from pairs of pals to families with kids, which I always like to see. As with many of London’s actually good self-styled brunch spots, particularly in south west, the place is under Kiwi rule, with chef-owner Mel Brown at the helm (my mom adored Mel because she brought her a cucumber margarita and talked to her about Solihull – parents do not buzz off anything in the world more than being away from home and then meeting someone who knows their local area). They serve a brunch menu and an all day menu of western European dishes, cooked with a few laid-back, New Zealand touches, and we ordered from both.
Our table was small but bright and snug, next to the window that looks out onto The Laundry’s cute patio (I am looking forward to going back in the summer, sitting out there and smoking 20 cigarettes in one earth hour). First up, as I’ve mentioned, was a round of cucumber margaritas, made with fresh cucumber juice. I never thought I’d say that I’m tiring of margs, but it’s a simple fact that they are, Charli XCX-style, suffering a bit from overexposure. As a result, while I don’t normally respect any fucking around with classic recipes, I actually welcomed this slightly mellower and less sweet take, and imagine I will be craving one as soon as I get my first Brits Abroad sunburn of the year.
Next came starters, which also meant the best bit of the whole meal, in a dinky dish of beef and chilli meatball ragu on smoked feta. Obviously I know that writing about how sweet tomato, salty cheese and rich beef taste good together is kind of like saying “You heard that Purple Rain? Pretty good!” but the small details – like the zing of the chilli and the whipped, cloudy texture of the feta – really made this particular mix of those ingredients memorable. We also ordered chicken liver parfait with toasts and a sharp, dish-maker of a feijoa chutney, but I’ll be honest: the toasts mostly went in the direction of scraping every possible bit of cheese off the meatball plate.
Mains-wise, my mom went for a salad with chicken cooked coq au vin-style, and I, as I am wont to do, plumped for steak frites with Café de Paris butter. We also had an easy-going bottle of Picpoul de Pinet, but can’t give you any further details, I’m afraid, because I was day drunk and I’ve forgotten. My cursory bite of the chicken got a thumbs up for moisture, plus there was a crisp on the skin that would please even TikTok’s most dedicated knife-grazing perverts. The leaves were generously tossed (hahah) (sorry) in a wholegrain mustard dressing that was still subtle enough for my fairly choosy mother. I enjoyed my steak frites – it is admittedly hard to go wrong with God’s Own Dish – but the meat was properly rested, and the fries were Mariah-skinny, though the butter was too heavy on the curry seasoning, without enough room for the complexity that makes Café de Paris such a flavour bomb, to get a look in (unfortunately for everyone else making this stuff, I’ve had the one that occasionally comes with scallops at Quality Wines in Farringdon, the harmoniousness of which puts you in such a beatific state that you might witness the face of God, or at the very least order a second round of bread).
To finish off, as a surprise, we were brought the world’s most undeniable dessert: a just-baked glamour girl of a cookie, with melting chocolate innards, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and a birthday candle for my mom to blow out. Cookie dough is one of those extremely special things whereby it does not matter at all where you get it – be it Pizza Hut or the pub or somewhere fancy – it’s just impossible not to like it. In this case, it was a very sweet touch that was really in keeping with the warmth of the service at The Laundry – which is to say that if you happen to be after a place where you can lavish attention upon moms or aunties or similar, that will leave them feeling satisfied and special, this is a lovely pick. Get yourself and your mom booked in, and tell them Lauren and Amanda sent you.
This visit was arranged by my friends at Tonic Communications; I didn’t pay but all my thoughts, as they always will be, are the honest truth so help me God!
Next stop was Forza Wine in Peckham. I had something of an ulterior motive in choosing this place for drinks before my mom went to catch her train home, firstly because I like the cocktails at Forza and it had been a while since I’d been in, but also because I’d heard rumours of a new dessert on their menu. These whispers (i.e. social media posts) concerned a soft serve ice cream modelled on a Fab ice lolly, adorned with sprinkles so brightly coloured I don’t actually think you can legally buy them in the UK.
Our table was a high two-top indoors, but because the place is walled by windows, we still got a good butchers at Forza’s skyline view (Everyone who has ever come to this restaurant: “Look over there, you can see the Shard.” Their mate: “Oh yeah”). The weather was a bit overcast, so Forza wasn’t quite on the high energy, any-two-people-in-this-gaff-could-start-necking-at-any-moment vibe that it tends to reach at the peak of summer, but the NTS day party disco tunes were pealing out of the speakers, like the bonging of the Bow Bells themselves, and the punters were generally your common or garden hyperlocal meme account millennials, bargaining over sharing plates. Forza is definitely not as Mom Friendly as The Laundry (tables are either outdoor or up on high stools, and the food leans trendy, so your appreciation of it might depend on your tolerance for extremely online plates of butterbeans and what have you), but as we were only stopping by, it didn’t really need to be.
When we came to order, we obviously skipped the main menu – though, pro-tip, Forza’s always-on cauliflower fritti with aioli is the good side of oily, and makes for a kind of Platonic ideal On The Piss snack – but I did ask for one of these Fab soft serves, because I am nothing if not a woman who a) loves novelty and things she’s seen on the internet b) is willing and able to eat two desserts.
Drinks-wise, my mom chose a vodka tonic, while I – in for a penny at this point, because I was going straight to the Arsenal match afterwards* – said “fuck it” and requested a frozen Picante, i.e. if the “what I order for the table” prompt on Hinge was a drink (listen, I didn’t promise you sophistication here, my favourite food is garlic bread and I have never claimed otherwise).
For the record, the Picante was plenty boozy and plenty spicy, with a consistency on the more liquid side (good given that loads of slushy cocktails go too far the other way, so you suck all the alcohol out in about two sips).
As for the soft serve, it comes in a short glass – the type you’d drink an espresso or a digestif out of. The Fab lolly version has a layer of orange jelly at the bottom, followed by luscious, milk flavoured soft serve, and it’s all topped with chocolate and the aforementioned rainbow E numbers. When it arrived at the table, it was teeny and adorable, and my mom, who had previously tutted at the suggestion of a second pudding (and, by extension, the terrible gluttony of her vile offspring), didn’t need much persuading.
Something interesting happened when we were eating this dessert. For most of the day, we’d spent our time catching up on family stuff and work, or talking about the food we were eating, but when the soft serve came, as my mom dug in, she spoke with a bit of a different timbre. Hacking through the hardened chocolate layer on the top of the ice cream with a teaspoon, she muttered: “This takes me right back to my childhood.”
My mom grew up in Birmingham, where she lives now, and she is the youngest of four siblings. In the late 70s and 80s, she was usually collected after school by her elder brothers. Sometimes, though, if my nan had an afternoon away from the pubs she ran with my grandad, she would fetch her. On sunny, smoggy afternoons on south Birmingham’s constantly grid-locked Stratford Road, that meant one thing, three rapturous words: ice cream man.
“I always asked for a Fab lolly,” my mom explained offhandedly, more interested in scooping the ice cream into a smooth little hump on her spoon. “I liked the bottom bit the best, the red.”
The Fab soft serve is a great dessert. The flavours are crowd-pleasing – the hard chocolate layer reminded me of one of the all-timer ice cream snacks: the choc-ice – and it looks cheerful. But it also did something that I find desserts tend to be especially capable of (and I actually wrote about this for GQ a while ago). It poked my mom’s imagination somehow, catching her somewhere in the chest, and it prompted her to tell me about other memories she had of eating when she was a kid. Some of them turned out to be really precious – like her recollection of the times when she, the smallest child, would sit on my grandad’s lap and share his dinner, squirrelling away the crispiest chips on the plate.
My grandad died eight years ago after an awful, protracted illness and I really miss him. He was kind, had a sharp mathematical mind and was dreadful for backseat driving (my nan has a good, illustrative anecdote about a time when they decided to redecorate the living room, and my grandad just stood watching her put the wallpaper up, chain smoking and saying “That’s not straight, Mag”.) It was so cool to get to hear new stories about him that I didn’t know – all, ultimately, because of an ice cream.
It feels apt to be writing about this here, in the first edition of Dining Out. I like writing about food firstly because I am a greedy bitch who loves life and can’t shut up, but secondly and more importantly because it is about people. And while the main aim here will always be to have a laugh, it is also edifying to be able to show you an example of how food’s special connection to love and memory has manifested in one of my own recent dining experiences. I hope that in the future I’ll be able to share more – plus if you want, I’ll tell you about the time I went to three bottomless brunches in a day and got sick at the second one, as well.
I paid for this visit.
* Bonus review of the offering in the hospitality boxes at the Emirates: quality chicken burger on a floury bun, and a lovely array of supermarket-style ‘Tex Mex selection’ dips (you know the ones you get in a four pack ft. ‘Thousand Island’? Absolutely elite). If I’m real though, the best bit was the stodgy, oozy mozzarella stick that I nicked off the dish which had been specially made up for the two kids in attendance when nobody was looking.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. It’s free to read every Thursday, but if you’d like to support what we do, you can do so here. To receive Dining Out directly to your inbox, subscribe via the button below:
See you next week!
:) beautiful