For best pals Jack Macrae and Viggo Blegvad, sandwich-making is their bread and butter.
But it wasn’t always so.
They launched Mondo Sando as a local delivery service during lockdown, only for it to immediately prove so insanely popular that they quit their jobs to run the show full-time.
Aside from a short stint at The White Horse in Peckham, they’ve been in residence at Camberwell’s Grove House Tavern ever since, making SE5 an essential destination on your London sandwich bucket list.
The pub itself is planted on a particularly leafy avenue just off the neighbourhood’s main drag, Camberwell Church Street. And it’s an exceptionally nice spot to spend an afternoon, especially if the sun’s out and you can bag a table outside. Come rain, you’ll just have to make do with the pub’s characterful interiors, with its high ceilings, vibrant jade walls and Persian rugs.
With a quiz every Tuesday night, live jazz on Sundays and free comedy on the first Thursday of the month, locals understandably pack the place out most nights of the week. But people genuinely cross London to get a taste of the sarnies here, and with very good reason.
It’s so big, it won’t even fit into this article.
The Mondo Sando team take simple white baguettes as their starting point, and go on to fill them with what are essentially entire standalone meals. The result: enormous, flavour-loaded beasts that are impossible to tackle without losing your dignity, but which you’ll persevere with anyway because you’ve never had anything like it.
The menu changes now and again, but expect regular appearances from the Nem With Ven, which packs a sub with a Vietnamese spring roll, Maggi mayo and a vegan nuoc cham; the Mondo Frango, with grilled peri-peri chicken thigh, potato matchsticks and shredded lettuce; and the Mondo BM2, with salami, provolone and mortadella layered up on a pickled pepper & olive salad. Going with them (as if you needed anything else): salads, fries, and a burnt Basque cheesecake with maraschino.
It’s the very literal cherry on top.
NOTE: Mondo Sando serves on weekdays 12-3pm & 6-9pm, and Saturdays 1-9pm. Sundays are for roasts (1-5pm), and they’re pretty great too. Find out more HERE.
Mondo Sando at Grove House Tavern | 26 Camberwell Grove, London SE5 8RE
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