On a quiet street in south London, the torch of vegetarianism still burns

Eating out in London even on a regular basis, it would be easy to think that the whole-food movement no longer existed. When I moved to the city five years ago, 1970s-style vegetarian food was still to be found at Cranks. When commercial failure put paid to that redoubtable chain, however, the options for lovers of nut roasts and lentils plummeted. For this reason, I was relieved, last weekend, to discover a restaurant-cum-community-centre called the Bonnington Cafe. Situated on a quiet residential street in Vauxhall, south London, it's a place where the torch of radical vegetarianism continues to burn, if not quite at full blaze, then at least at a steady rate.

I came to know about the cafe through a friend, as I suspect you have to be, as it doesn't advertise and isn't mentioned in many guides. On its (decidedly primitive) website - www.bonningtoncafe.co.uk - I learned that the cooking is done by rota: whose food you sample depends on which night you visit. A timetable is provided, along with the phone numbers of the various chefs, and prospective diners are encouraged to let chefs know of their intention to visit. This unorthodox system makes the booking process charmingly personal: it almost feels as if you were going for a meal at someone's house.

This impression intensifies when you arrive at the cafe. The dining room and kitchen occupy the ground floor of a modest Victorian terrace house. Diners sit around cramped wooden tables; the cutlery doesn't match; and the menu consists of a single starter, two main courses, and two desserts. You have to bring your own wine. Rather remarkably, given the lack of space, there is live music: halfway through our meal, a pianist and a saxophonist began belting out jazz standards.

The menu, when we visited, comprised a starter of broccoli risotto torte, main courses of lentil-and-watercress patties and spicy potato strudel, and a choice of chestnut or marble cake for dessert. It was all extremely fresh-tasting and well prepared - the potato strudel was particularly fine. It has to be said, though, that there was a certain textural repetitiveness: everything was a variant of that retro-vegetarian staple, the "slice".

Our meal was cooked by Margarete Baur, one of the cafe's founders. After some initial scepticism ("You are going to take the piss"), she agreed to talk, and told me that the cafe began life in the early 1980s, as a sort of communal soup kitchen for squatters in the area. The squatters soon moved out, at which point it was turned into a semi-commercial, but still community-based, enterprise. The Bonnington Cafe is a throwback, certainly, but in a way that makes its existence all the more welcome. It is good to know that London's lentil-munchers still have a place they can call their own.

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