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This little café inside a Persian delicatessen, Persepolis, is a fun place serving fun food. The vibe is colourful, crowded and charmingly bonkers. A handful of chairs and tables have been shoehorned between shelves stuffed with shisha pipes, embossed glassware, musical instruments, spices and specialist foodstuffs. They provide the setting for a liberal vegetarian interpretation of Iranian and Levantine dishes, with Peckham influences: Moroccan harissa is used with fried plantains, for example. Meze and wraps form the bedrock, with seasonally inspired fillings such as quince, halloumi and caramelised celeriac. Drinks go from Afghan green tea to pomegranate juice via date and cardamom latte.
And it’s excellent value, with a large meze costing just £8.50. Share one of these followed by one of their £3.50 desserts; a saffron banana split, ‘Hot Paklava Meltdown’ or, best of all, a Turkish delight sundae: chunks of Turkish delight and slivers of halva in clouds of whipped cream, vanilla and saffron ice cream, drizzled with rose cordial and rose petals. Sounds sickly, but tastes divine.