Where to eat in Peckham for under fifteen pounds

Peckham has a reputation for the rooftop bar and the tasting menu, and it deserves the other reputation more: this is one of the best places in London to eat well for very little money. The market, the high street, and the side roads between them are full of places where the food is built to feed you rather than to photograph well, and none of them will take fifteen pounds off you unless you order badly on purpose.

Peckham Bus Garage Cafe, Blackpool Road

At the back of the actual bus garage, behind the gates, mainly used by TfL drivers on their breaks and open to anyone who finds it. Fry-ups on one side of the menu, jerk chicken and curry goat on the other, and a room that has never heard of interior design because it does not need to. There is almost no signage. That is the single best recommendation on this list. If you have to ask someone for directions, you are doing it right.

Persepolis, Peckham High Street

Persian deli with a vegetarian restaurant inside it. The feasting platter is thirty pounds a head but the individual plates are well under fifteen. Bring your own wine with no corkage charge and you can sit for as long as you want without anyone giving you a look. Twenty years on Peckham High Street and it has outlasted every trend that arrived and departed around it.

Chan Chan, Rye Lane Market

Peruvian home cooking from a market counter inside Rye Lane Market. Aji de gallina, spicy beef stew, a soup that changes daily and is never the same two visits running. The portions are built for people who came to eat lunch, not to graze, and the price for a full plate with rice and salad is the kind of number that makes you check the menu twice. The market itself is one of the most interesting food environments in south London and this counter is one of the reasons.

Cafe Spice, Rye Lane

Nigerian and West African takeaway on Rye Lane. Pepper soup, egusi, okra and spinach with pounded yam or eba, jollof rice, suya, fried plantain, moi moi. The menu reads like a tour of Lagos street food and the portions are designed for people who work physical jobs and need to be full until evening. Collection or local delivery. If you have never eaten Nigerian food before, start with the jollof and the plantain and work outward from there.

Auntie Didines Bakery, Rye Lane Market

A bakery counter inside the market selling cakes, pastries and sweet bakes to take away. West African and Caribbean influenced, with coconut drops, chin chin, and rum cake alongside more familiar pastries. The kind of stop that turns a walk down Rye Lane into a better afternoon for less than the price of a coffee elsewhere.

Daphanies Taste of the Caribbean, Peckham High Street

Jerk chicken, curry goat, rice and peas, patties, and a steam table of daily specials that changes with whatever the kitchen felt like making. Straightforward and consistent, which on Peckham High Street where Caribbean restaurants compete hard is the highest compliment available. The portions are generous and the regulars are daily.

Cafe Britaly, Rye Lane

A British-Italian cafe that crosses the two cuisines on purpose rather than by accident. Full Britalian breakfast at one end of the menu: bacon, eggs, and a fried supplì. Fried pizzetta and arancini at the other. The room is small and busy at weekends and the name is not a joke, it is a genuine statement of intent.

City Kebab, Peckham High Street

Doner, shish, wraps, chips, open late. Not pretending to be anything else and not apologising for it. Every neighbourhood needs a kebab shop that is reliably good at 11pm and this is the one.

Delicias Colombianas, Old Kent Road

Colombian restaurant and bakery on Old Kent Road. Empanadas, arepas stuffed with cheese or shredded beef, bandeja paisa with grilled meat and rice and beans and a fried egg on top, and a glass counter of sweet bakes that are impossible to walk past without buying something. The Old Kent Road stretch south of the Bricklayers Arms has a run of Latin American places that nobody outside SE15 writes about and this is the best of them.

Copleston Community Cafe, Copleston Road

Volunteer-run at the Copleston Centre, serving affordable hot meals during its public sessions. One of the few places on this list where the price is the point rather than a by-product: it exists to feed people who need feeding, and it does so with dignity and without fuss. Open days vary, check before going.