New home: The Flygerians, now at the cafe at Peckham Palms
(Picture: Adrian Lourie)There are times in this job when I walk into a new place and know, fairly quickly, that I probably won’t commit a word of it to print. Sometimes it is because what’s on offer is decent but thin; occasionally, it’s because the experience occupied some greige interzone of blandness that is neither excellent nor terrible enough to be especially interesting. But at The Flygerians — the new incarnation of sibling British-Nigerian founders Jess and Jo Edun’s roving Peckham restaurant — that Spidey tingle of slight apprehension was harder to diagnose.
The menu was a very short affair, on grease-spotted crinkled paper. Food seemed to be mostly served in takeaway boxes, prepared by a lone female server/bartender/chef in a tiny, basic kitchen. The playlist of Afrobeats bangers on a little Bluetooth speaker kept sputtering out. Even allowing for these times of staffing crisis it seemed, in the nicest way possible, that there wasn’t much fully-fledged restaurant here to actually dig into.
But, well, more fool me. By the time the first dishes arrived (which, it transpires, are prepped at a bigger, delivery-focused Old Kent Road kitchen before being elegantly finished here) I was absolutely lovestruck and ready to fervently recommend it to every passing stranger on Rye Lane. So, no. The Flygerians is not really a traditionally formal dining establishment. But this feels very much like a feature rather than a bug.
This new home is the culmination of a long 11-year journey for the Peckham famous Edun sisters. A successful residency at nearby pub The Old Nun’s Head cemented their years of hustle on the street food circuit. Now, as of March, they have put down roots with a year-long takeover of the cafe at Peckham Palms: a sleek mini mall of female-run, black hair and beauty businesses. As well as a laminated photo of Mama Mary, fabric-backed bar stools, and a mass of scatter cushions, the compact, ship’s prow of a space is dominated by a draped Nigerian flag and a Pride one; a nod to the inclusive events programme which, this summer, includes mixers for black gay men, and a jollof-fuelled polyamorous community social that I’ve had quite a fun time imagining myself explaining to, say, my mum.
Still, if there is an appealing progressiveness to The Flygerians’ spirit then the food feels rooted in comfort and nostalgia. “Fly wings” brought five hulking boomerangs of light-battered bird, gorgeously hot and plump within and set in their oozy, judiciously sweetened “Forbidden sauce”. Beef suya — the fiery, peanut and pepper-laced barbecue snack — was, I think, actually hunks of slow-stewed meat, reverse-seared in the fryer and offering soft tenderness as well as brow-beading heat. A shared jollof rice box, meanwhile, was everything you’d want: deeply sauced glistening grains and a loose tangle of softened peppers, crowned by a generous double wave of flaking, deep-fried red bream.
Much of the Edun sisters’ early press focused on them rendering West African flavours with clear British inflections. And this is true, up to a point. But what The Flygerians reminded me of, in a strange way, was an exceptional pub or traditional caff; a place where ubiquitous standards are executed on their own terms with the sort of atypical grace and magic that impresses devotees and newcomers alike.
Sampling the lone pudding, a spin on banoffee pie with Nigerian “chin chin” biscuits and a flourish of squirty cream, was beyond us. So we slurped the last of our terrific, homemade apple and ginger juices, gathered up the cling filmed cartons of leftovers (this, as it turns out, is part of the reason for using takeaway packaging), resolved to return for the apparently much-busier, DJ-powered Saturday nights, and stepped out into the sun. What the Edun sisters have done is create something nimble, generous and jubilant, that matches both the needs of a community and the harsh realities of a restaurant business model that has never looked more vulnerable. This may be them in fledgling form. But The Flygerians really do deserve to soar.
