The Common

less than impressed. went here with my tastecard the other night. they MANDATED we make a booking and the place was completely empty when we arrived. fine, fair enough.
ordered the crispy squid and goat cheese tart for a starter. squid was a bit oily and the tart felt like it had come out of the microwave. not a great start, but not terrible tasting.
moving on to the main — he had the lamb chop special and i had the steak. steak was less than stellar, and while his lamb looked good, i didn’t try it.
good things i can say about this place: close to common, it’s BYO which is nice (but with a 3.50 corkage fee per bottle of wine), and it wasn’t a terrible meal. but overall, i won’t be running back. had we not had 50% off the meal, i would have been very disappointed.

Hmmm I see that the previous page for this establishment has been deleted, dare I say due to the negative comments posted? And Andrew Hunter looks suspiciously like the chap behind the till — could be a mere coincidence of course.
However, what has not changed is the cock-​ups made to customers’ orders. Having experienced this on at least five occasions after the current owners took over, I gave up and didn’t visit for 9 months. Well, I thought I would give them a second chance and went back recently. Incredibly, orders were still being cocked-​up! I witnessed one lady get a refund as the food had not been received. Similarly, customers were left wiating for ages at tables before being served. I cannot understand why the service issue has still not been rectified, particularly as service under the last owners was always fantastic.
It’s a real shame, because the food is actually pretty good and value for money.

Changed hands in 2009. Now dreadful. Slow incompetent service. Pointless café that is neither one thing nor the other.

In the name of Unilocal,I shunned my usual haunts of Breads etc and Fantasia for a lazy brunch and instead decided to check out this little café which I’d walked past all too often.
It’s not huge, at all. But the décor is clean and simple and the lack of natural light made it fairly relaxing and ambient. Friendly staff and a long menu, the food was really tasty and didn’t take long to be served.
You can sit here with your brunch, read the paper and look out over the Common. All this for me on a Monday when I ought to have been at work; it made it that much sweeter.
I’ll be back.

I feel bad putting this review in with all of the great breakfast reviews, but be warned I’m reviewing it solely for it’s new evening menu experience.
So this apparently very popular and hip breakfast/​brunch spot has decided to hire on a chef to make an evening menu to pull in more business. So especially as it listed itself as a BYOB (which was a big plus until when we got our bill there was a 2£ corkage fee added on per person then it just became ok, it’s not really BYOB if you charge us for it anyway) we just had to try it out. Here’s my breakdown:
This is a place that is really in the trying out stage of offering a dinner menu. I know this because a. they don’t have proper ventilation for cooking meat (you will smell like it when you leave) and b. they don’t purchase enough product to have it available if they get a bit more of a crowd due to the weather. They have maybe 6 main entrees to offer and when we were there, they didn’t have 2 of them. 4 entrees to choose from is not so great especially when each of us wanted 1 of the no gos (would have been nice if they mentioned this before we sat down). c. they only have one waiter working the entire space regardless of night/​crowd so don’t expect the most tentative or friendly of service.
That being said, after our original dismay on those 3 points above, when we actually got the food we could order, it was prepared well and delicious. Everything else would receive this place 2 stars but since the food was of quality I give it 3. I wouldn’t recommend it for a romantic night out or for large groups, it’s definitely got it’s kinks to work on, but there are signs of life to it’s evening menu and is worth a try. Really just ask them before you sit down if they have all of their entrees so you won’t be disappointed!

I had to drag myself to Clapham all the way from Mansion house because it was raining and my friend didn’t want to have breakfast at a place very far off from a tube station. Looking back, it was a good decision :)
Pavement serves the biggest portions of English breakfast i have seen anywhere. The «even bigger breakfast» contains toast, 3 rashers of bacon, 3 eggs, 2 sausages, black pudding, tomato, mushroom, baked beans … everything … and all for £7.xx. Makes this an ideal place for a saturday brunch after drunken friday night festivities.
We had also ordered french toast, which was delicious.
The menu had a number of interesting drinks which i would like to try out sometime later … chocolate tea being one of them (though i suspect it would taste a lot like mocha). My friend ordered the spicy tea … but it didn’t taste like the tea either of us were used to.
The restaurant is divided into two floors … and the appearance is rather shabby. But really, this isn’t a place for a business dinner right, and so i wouldn’t care. For a weekend breakfast, few places are better.

Went for breakfast one dreary and dismal morning. The ground-​floor area was a bit spartan, if not shabby. I wasn’t expecting much when I received a battered laminated A4 paper as a menu. I went for the muesli with organic yoghurt, milk and fresh fruit. It arrived with splendidly bright strawberries, blueberries and bananas on top, even in the middle of winter. I found the entire thing thoroughly enjoyable, and I appreciated the fact that the natural yoghurt wasn’t sweetened.
My sister got a ham and brie bagel with a fried egg on top, and she said it was amazing.
So, there you go. I made an unjustifiably negative snap judgment about this place based on what it looked like. But the food was spot on. A teeeny bit on the pricey side, but well executed.
Although the toilet was a bit grim. Just sayin’.

Great location, delicious coffees, yummy cakes, tasty & filling breakfast and lunch. And the staff is lovely and everything is very well priced. Thumbs up!

Used to work near The Pavement and couldn’t afford regular Starbucks coffees on my crappy wage to tried The Pavement… and what do you know — the coffee here’s 10 times better!
The food is good honest café food — jacket potatoes, hot and cold sandwiches and soup of the day. etc Everyone who works here is friendly too. A real neighbourhood gem.

Just writing «The Pavement» has made me smile. I have beautiful memories of spending long days sitting here with my laptop and a pot of tea, looking out onto the common whilst wrestling with essays and critical theory. When I lived in Clapham, as a student, I went here practically every day. I ordered tea of the breakfast or blackcurrant variety and perhaps some mushrooms on toast (a surprisingly excellent dish). I love its little wooden tables, its toasty smell and the friendly staff. The view is an excellent bonus if you’re sitting upstairs, but downstairs is equally inviting. It’s like sitting in your own home, a homely kitchen where you don’t have to make the food and there’s plenty of people to look at too. The menu is small but varied; one of my friends swears by the quiche, whereas I love the breakfast items best, and for a quick snack, the muffins. It’s all very reasonable and there’s wireless internet too. This is a perfect little café. My only gripe is the noise the drink machine makes upstairs — try not to sit too close to it!

Awesome little café on the quaint Pavement in Clapham, right next to the tube station. There are only a few tables on the upstairs level, but explore further — they have a lot more seating downstairs.
Serving a lovely selection of cakes and teas, this establishment is famed for it’s breakfasts. Given that a large portion of the population of Clapham is under 30 with a penchant for boozing, you can imagine that the café gets super busy at the weekends, with people queueing for their greasy fry ups. Portions are huge, and they also have great smoothies on the menu to restore you to health.
Great location, you can take your sandwich over to the common or hide in the basement, either way it’s a wonderful place to spend a weekend morning feeding yourself. The only bad thing is that they dont accept credit cards.

This is an excellent little café right by Clapham Common tube station.
Tiny in size, the café thankfully has a basement area to hold more customers as it is always busy, especially on a Sunday, when their range of sandwiches and breakfasts really fit in with the relaxed newspaper reading vibe of the place.
Great panini’s and also some yummy cakes to tempt you, excellent service and well-​priced. They also do takeout if you wanted to take your grub onto the common or back home to recover.