Marie's Cafe
90 Lower Marsh London SE1 7AB
We love Marie's, a little café with a big reputation on one of south London's foodiest stretches, footsteps from Waterloo station. They do great breakfasts, a decent shepherds pie and other bog-standard greasy spoon fare, but the friendly Thai ladies who run the place are best known for the tasty homegrown Thai grub they serve up for the same sort of prices. The food is basic, hottish, and authentic, with a choice of curries, noodle dishes, great chilli cod or prawns and barbecue chicken or pork, for not much more than a fiver; lovely, spicy slaw-ish salads too. We've never been invited back to someone's mum's for dinner in Thailand, but we imagine that if we were the food might be something like this. You can bring your own booze, which helps keep the price down, and service is briskly friendly and prompt. Obviously you can't book – it's not that sort of place – and it's pretty popular, with a bit of a cult following among locals, so be prepared to wait for a table on busy nights. Still, anywhere in central London where you can eat your fill for under a tenner has got be worth the wait.
