Corner Corner is a completely new angle on the food hall.
And not just because it has its own jazz club. Or because it has a sprawling immersive events space glued onto it. But because it has its own farm too – in fact it’s got London largest indoor farm sitting, appropriately, right next to the kitchens.
It’s genuinely unlike anything else in the city, and you’ll find this feverishly ambitious cultural hub in one of the only bits of Zone 2 with enough breathing room to accommodate 55,000 square foot of urban optimism like this one: Canada Water. It sits overlooking the dock itself, and the bright red Asif Khan-desighed bridge snaking through it from the tube station.
Step inside, and you’ve got the usual suspects — round tables, mixed chairs, vaguely Nordic sofas — but the whole thing’s lit like a Blade Runner grow-op, thanks to that indoor vertical farm glowing behind glass, drenching the place with the blushed neon glow of pale pink photosynthesis chic. The effect is somewhere between space-age greenhouse and co-working utopia, gently grounded by a circular stage in the corner, with a grand piano dropped dead in the centre of it.
So, first thing’s first – the farm. It’s run by a company called Harvey London, who have been growing vegetables in former tube tunnels for almost a decade now. Here, they’re apparently growing more than 200 types of crop, and supplying not just the kitchens next door, but also a huge diaspora of restaurants across the city too. All told, it means that the fruit of this soil-free cathedral will get from the farm to your mouth in less than 4 hours.
The restaurants vacuuming up this hyper-fresh produce have been curated by the folks at KERB, and they include Chick N Sours making their first move south of the river (slinging their famed Korean-style chicken burgers, and pickled watermelon salads); Taiwanese street food and BBQ from Jou Jou’s Bites (think dumplings, bao, and rice bowls); Mexican street bites from Masa Tacos (Shredded barabcoa beef, crispy Baja-style fish, etc); and Armenian & Levantine flavours from Sireli.
As for that grand piano? You can expect live jazz, funk, and world music every Thursday – Sunday, with musicians corralled by Broadwick (the team behind venues like Drumsheds and Battersea Power Station’s Control Room A). The opening lineup includes the likes of Grammy-nominated Acantha Lang, and DJ Donna Leake, who was nominated for the Breakthrough DJ award by DJ magazine, so hopes are set to ‘high’.
Finally, there’s the immersive event space. Like the rest of the venue, it’s vast, and is currently housing the Minecraft: Villager Rescue experience, with enough space for seven flat-sized rooms of fully built-out, interactive action. It’ll be there until the end of June.
Which means the next event? Is just around the corner.
NOTE: Corner Corner is open now. There are no bookings (unless there are 20+ of you), and you can find out more at their super-angular website.
Corner Corner | Maritime Street, SE16 7LL
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