Coal Rooms

Coal Rooms | Peckham’s Temple to Flame-Kissed Meat

If you’re bad, Santa gives you coal.

But if you’re very, very good, he gives you Coal Rooms – a grill restaurant and café cooked up by ex-Smokehouse chef, Sam Bryant, and the team behind Old Spike Roastery.

They’ve set up shop in the Grade II-listed former ticket office of Peckham Rye station, now restored to its former glory and, naturally, fitted with a sunken open kitchen boasting a bespoke, coal-fired robata grill. Up front, you’ll find a relaxed café area that converts into a bar come the evening, while the back of the restaurant hosts a candlelit, Victorian-tiled private dining room that doubles as an in-house bakery and butchery through the day.

Mornings at Coal Rooms kick off with hearty breakfasts like scrambled eggs with sriracha, cheese, and hot dog onions, alongside a coffee-cured bacon sandwich. There’s a huge emphasis on sustainability, so ingredients are pinched and pilfered from dish to dish – later in the day, they serve up flatbreads and sandwiches made with leftover whey from their cheese suppliers, sporting fillings like crab rarebit, egg yolk and samphire, and pig’s cheek with XO sauce and crackling.

Come the evening, Bryant starts slinging generous cuts of meat onto the grill, so expect hefty Mangalitsa cowboy steaks and 40 day-aged sirloin alongside more elegant servings of smoked eel, roast cod heads and bone marrow curry. They’re topped with a slick of house-made sauces, including jerk caramel, greengage and mead ketchup, and a red eye gravy made by deglazing the pan with coffee.

And to finish? The tiramisu, made with excess milk from the café in the mornings.

You have been good, after all…

NOTE: Coal Rooms is open daily. You can find out more, and make a reservation, HERE.

Coal Rooms | 11a Station Way, SE15 4RX

Peruse our guide to more great restaurants in Peckham