Stars and steaks: Passyunk’s USA-themed spot in Waterloo
(Picture: Matt Writtle)And so to Waterloo, London’s grey-walled nadir, where the culinary highlights include an All Bar One beside a Slug and Lettuce. As far as I can tell, there are about three good things about this part of town: Abba’s banger, the Young Vic, and the Old Vic. The London Eye doesn’t count — its whole thing is taking punters up and away to peer at much nicer neighbourhoods.
The addition of Passyunk Avenue, then, is a welcome one. It sits on Leake Street, in the warren under the railway tracks where the walls are a sleeve tattoo of graffiti and once nothing existed but skateboards and the smell of weed, but where presently there is a club, board game cafe, bao house and MamuÅka!, the enthusiastically-punctuated Polish kitchen. And now this place, part American dive bar, part diner, and named for a street in Philadelphia where two famous cheesesteak houses, Pat’s and Geno’s, sit opposite each other and pretend to feud. Passyunk does what they do: beers, bourbon and subs that glow with orange cheese.
