I’d heard from Josh that a certain galactic princess had landed in Peckham while I was away. So on Tuesday, I hopped on the Millennium Falcon a 37 bus to see.

*sniff* I miss Carrie. Her voice was unique.

When I was gosh, I’m not sure, maybe 4 years old, I was shopping with the Mothership when we came across some children’s underwear sets – lovely 70s vest-and-pants combos. I seized the Princess Leia one with delight, but callously switched to Wonder Woman when my mother pointed out the colours were more jolly. For some reason, it’s always made me feel a little guilty. I’m sorry, Carrie.

The Artful Dodger has done a couple of other large pieces in Peckham. This one’s next to Leia:

Where indeed?

 

A quick stroll into the South London Gallery, which is a lovely space, where they’re showing a video installation by Amie Siegel called “Quarry”, which both our godsons would love – there’s lots of heavy machinery crunching big blocks of marble.

Upstairs, there were two pieces of marble from the Trump Tower in New York. They looked like marbled steak. Next door, another video installation showed the annual cleaning of Sigmund Freud’s collection, where the bristly sound of the brushes set my teeth on edge.

There’s a lovely cafe and a bookshop filled with precious things, though.

I walked on towards Peckham Rye and found another Artful Dodger, this one by the Peckhamplex:

The Grand Ad-May-ral and her bewigged familiar

Feeling blue, Theresa?

A little further along, where the road splits, is Mr Bao. It was getting towards lunchtime, and you can insert a pun about feeling peckish in Peckham here, because I’m sure that’s never been done before.

The great thing about south London is the lack of queues.

Iconic Pakistani kebab house? No queue.

Best sourdough pizza in town? No problem.

Cute little bao joint? Step right in and grab that table by the bar. 

So I did.

I had the house stewed pork bao, the sticky, sweet, spiced pork in a large, fluffy bao bun. It was deliciously messy, thanks to the crumbled peanuts and pickles on top.

The spinach salad came with a tahini dressing and sesame seeds – scrumptious.

There was also a large portion of sweet potato fries with a zingy wasabi mayonnaise, but they came a little later and then I totally ate them before taking a photo. Sorry.

I’ll definitely return with Ted soon – the baos are so good and there are a couple more must-try options on the menu, plus the side dishes were seriously tasty.

Let’s take one last closeup look at that pork bao:

Ohh yeah.

(PS Taiwanese root beer is excellent, btw.)