Dining Out 007: Janda Diner
Dinner in Peckham.
If you read Dining Out every week, by now you’ll probably have noticed that a lot of the places I’ve talked about recently have been in south east London. I live in Peckham, do half of the work week in Peckham, and spend my social time dragging my carcass on an endless loop of about three different mediocre pubs in Peckham (I love it here but the pubs are largely crap fair play*), so it follows that I’d eat around here all the time as well.
As such, I’m afraid that if you are one of those people who loves to loudly go on about how you would rather violently kill yourself than go south of the river, you will be sadly be displeased both by this week’s instalment and next week’s (though I do promise to go a bit further afield again soon, because variety is the spice bag of life and so on). But if you are willing to come to Dining Out with an open and loving heart as per Christ’s great example, you will find gems herein, even if you have to get the Overground to them.
I am going to tell you about one such gem today: Janda Diner, a new-ish Malaysian restaurant right next to The White Horse right at the end of Rye Lane, and the site of one of the best, most straightforwardly brilliant meals I have eaten anywhere in a very long time.
Janda started out as a pop up at the Man of Kent in Nunhead last year, before moving to its current place not long before Christmas. And after the departure of Mambow from the area for pastures boujier (Clapton) last year, central Peckham had a gap for a Malaysian spot that Janda has both filled and reshaped, serving up voluptuous riffs on the home cooking that head chef Ady Yacob grew up with.
I ended up there at the weekend because last Friday, my friend Hannah and I both felt a bit shit (if there’s one thing I’m going to do it’s have a friend called Hannah). It was the day last week in London when the weather had, all of a sudden, changed for the better, and everyone was milling about looking about five times sexier purely by virtue of the sunshine and the immediate influx of Little Shorts.
I think on days like that, if you’re in a lonely or listless or fed up mood, it can sometimes end up being particularly difficult, because you feel like you should immediately be absolutely loving life, breathing in all of the possibility that seems to have materialised in the air, when in actual fact you are lying on your back on the sofa, hiding from the heat and the light, googling “retinol skin flaking normal?”
From our respective couches, Hannah and I were texting back and forth about feeling blah, anyway, and ascertained that we were both free the next day, so we decided to have dinner together and give joviality in the sun another bash. When we were choosing where we wanted to go, our criteria was loose (somewhere you can sit down; reasonably cheap), so we mentally cycled through a lot of options: Persepolis, Bar D4100, Yada’s, Ganapati and loads more besides in the area fit that brief, after all. We landed, however, on Janda, partly because it felt right for the hot weather, partly because we were both pretty new to Malaysian food and wanted to give it a go, and partly (partly) because Janda is that most wonderful of things: BYOB.
I called up and booked a table for 7PM the next day, and when the time came, we arrived one Aperol Spritz each down – ancient adage: “sun’s out huns out x” – with a bottle of Riesling and empty tummies (corkage is £10; if you’re drinking beers you just have to pay a £4 surcharge per person). We were immediately greeted, by name, by Lanny, the palpably delightful front of house host, who showed us to our places in the middle of the room.
When we arrived, every table was occupied by large groups of friends, probably in their 30s (you know the types of Hinge couples who look like each other? That vibe). The space is a pretty cramped one when it’s full – if you’ve ever been to any of the restaurants that have passed through that little spot, like the old Cravings La Carreta, you’ll be aware of a) how cosy it is and b) how hot it gets in there – so maybe that’s something to note if it bothers you. As someone who would eat at a table attached to a moving tractor if I knew I was being fed well, however, while I like a spacious dining room, I’ve also never minded a bit of a squeeze or a compromise. As soon as the food at Janda starts making its way out of Yacob’s kitchen, you’re too preoccupied to care about anything so arbitrary as where or how you’re sat, anyway.
Our order consisted of shrimp crackers, roti jala sage – a type of rolled roti served on dal – grilled seabass, a squash dish with glass noodles and coconut milk, and turmeric rice, plus a serving of “milk fried chicken” for Miss Gout UK 2024 over here, because I couldn’t resist (the chicken was recommended to me by my friend Tom, who also put me on to Janda in the first place, so everyone say “thank you Tom”). There isn’t a single thing that I ate that wasn’t absolutely delicious, the flavours and textures dancing in a sweet spot where there felt like there was no compromise on pleasure and indulgence, but crucially, nothing felt too over-wrought.
The roti jala sage had the crisp edges of a pancake, with a softer, more porous interior, and they and served as a light foil to a few spoonfuls of mildly spiced lentils, which still had quite a bit of bite left in them – kind of like the Rodney to the pulses’ Del Boy. The crackers were fresh and crisp and thin and everything you want properly good prawn crackers to be, and they came with a syrupy, fiery dipping sauce that made me wish I had never learned the words “sweet chilli”.
Mains-wise, the seabass was a fine-looking young fellow, brought to the table whole, and it was served with a red onion garnish and long, delicious stems of perfectly seasoned spinach, with a vinegary finish. The flesh itself flaked under the skin with just the slightest of pulls from our forks, and again, the salting was on the money for such a mild fish, enhancing where overpowering would have been easy. It also contrasted really well with the squash – tender, on the plate in baked blocks, and covered in a rich coconut sauce that dialled the sweetness up in a way that felt badly-behaved and, therefore, awesome.
Best of all, unsurprisingly, however, was that milk fried chicken, which might as well just be labelled on the menu as “hedonism”. Essentially, it’s ayam goreng with a twist: I expected a dry dish, but the chicken is served in a thick, mellow concoction made with oyster sauce, condensed milk, butter, white pepper, garlic, and curry leaves. Despite the heaviness of some of the ingredients, however, their uses are so precise that you don’t ever feel overwhelmed. The fried exterior on the chicken means that this sauce clings to it, but the seasoning cuts through the bulkier dairy. It’s an exceptionally decadent-feeling dish that you can actually make headway with, because the cooking keeps it lighter than you’d expect. I ate basically the entire plate on my own, and I’m sure I’ll do it again, probably quite soon.
As I said, everything was genuinely great – and in particular, if I were the sort of person to whinge on about dishes that are The Best Whatever In London, I would certainly gesture towards that chicken – and Lanny’s service was so legitimately fun that it really made the whole experience (at one point after lovingly reorganising our table, he asked if he could take a photo of the flat lay of dishes, then also offered to take a load of photos of Hannah and I and then AirDropped me the pics immediately, which is feminist allyship in action; as such, I am beside myself with excitement to go back to Janda for their brunch service with about six girls in tow).
By the time Hannah and I had settled our bill – the food came to £66 including corkage, which was phenomenal value – the room had cleared out a little, but when the cooking at Janda is this interesting and skilful, I think there’ll be pretty steady footfall all night very soon. There’s so much good shit in Peckham – like, truly where else in London are you getting served exquisite suya cooked by a YouTube famous chef who has a ring light affixed to the lamppost next to his outdoor set up? (Suuyar at the top of Choumert Road fucking rocks by the way) – but this is probably some of the most exciting food I’ve eaten around here in ages. Get Janda booked, eat the craziest plate of chicken you’re likely to have this year, and thank me later.
I paid for this visit.
* Early footnote this week but before anyone starts, here is my definitive take on the Peckham pubs that I go to with any regularity: Skehans is in New Cross, there are always a minimum of six dates happening in The Montpelier and it’s a really off-putting vibe, The Victoria is too posh, The Angel Oak is kind of chain-y feeling, The White Horse is overrated because of the front garden, the Nag’s Head is funny but not good, the Ivy House is lovely and worthy of us all spending our money there but also crucially not quite good, and The Greyhound is too new for me to give you a proper verdict yet, though I have been going there quite a lot. The best there is in the immediate-ish vicinity is The Herne Tavern – outstanding garden – but I can rarely be arsed to walk all the way up there, and that is my truth.
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!
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