Louis Louis: Making its mark

It’s fair to say Louie Louie is one of the places to eat in south London right now – and it’s just a few steps from Elephant Park.

Founded in 2017, Louie Louie is the result of a crowdfunding campaign launched by the team behind community café Fowlds in nearby Camberwell. The successful kick-starter reportedly raised £30,000 – enough to launch the café/restaurant into the heart of Elephant and Castle – and it hasn’t looked back since.

The popular eatery is run as a café by day, serving breakfast, lunch, and coffee with cakes carefully created by the cool hands of Brazilian pastry chef Michel Scherer. By night Louie Louie is a restaurant and bar serving a small-plates menu designed by a changing line-up of chefs cooking up a broad range of international cuisines.

The current evening ‘chefs in residence’ are Sam Bryant and Alicja Specjalna (corr) – aka Whole Beast. The pair met at Peckham favourite Coal Rooms and have incorporated their love of cooking all cuts of meat using flame, smoke, embers and ash into their Louie Louie offering. On the Whole Beast menu until June 1, you’ll find dishes such as hanger steak with bone marrow, alongside coal-roasted cauliflower and beef-dripping chips.

Next to be charring and grilling their way through the Louie Louie evening residency will be Romanian chefs Alex Sava and Christian San, of restaurant Eastern Bloc. They’ll be bringing traditional recipes from around the Black Sea to the Elephant and Castle hotspot from Monday 3 June.

As well as proving itself as a popular café and restaurant, Louie Louie also seems to know a thing or two about cocktails. On Fridays and Saturdays from 7pm to 1am, Late Night Louie is open in the basement, where you can enjoy cocktails created by top mixologists to the sounds of guest DJs.

Day or night, hungry or thirsty, Louie Louie is making its mark on Elephant and Castle.