Kaieteur Kitchen Original
Closed. The Castle Square unit was locked in October 2025 over GBP 21,000 of electricity arrears the landlord wanted paid upfront, and on 5 December 2025 Time Out reported that Faye Gomes would not be reopening there (Time Out, 2025).
Why go
This is a record, not a plan. Faye Gomes, known to everyone as Aunty Faye, had been cooking Guyanese food at Elephant since 2003, first from a stall in the old shopping centre and then, after the centre was demolished in 2020, from a first-floor unit in the temporary Castle Square hub at 40 Elephant Road. The cooking was built on cassareep, the reduced bitter-cassava syrup that both seasons and preserves a pot, which is why pepperpot can sit on a stove for days and improve. She explained the lineage herself: Pepperpot! Which is made with cassareep. It's a Guyanese Amerindian invention
(Vittles, 2020). By 2025 the room was ranked sixth-best restaurant in London by The Infatuation and had been through Lunch with the FT (Vittles, 2025).
Order this / avoid
- Order: nothing here now. If she reopens, the dishes on the record are the pepperpot and the spinach rice with curried pumpkin, which Jonathan Nunn named, plus the coconut lamb that The Infatuation called a
mild, cuddly stew
and an oxtail stew with plantain it rateddeeply savoury and ladle-worthy.
- Avoid: the two channels that still advertise the place. The venue's own site and the Castle Square landlord's trader page both listed the unit as trading on 29 July 2026.
What locals & experts say
- Vittles (8 October 2025): Jonathan Nunn described Faye Gomes as
the owner of the exceptional Guyanese restaurant Kaieteur Kitchen and one of my favourite cooks in London,
and put the closure in context:With the new shopping centre due to open in 2026, and with chains and slicker restaurants with financial backing competing for limited space, it's unclear if Kaieteur Kitchen or any of the old Elephant food businesses will be allowed to stay in the area.
1 - The Infatuation (2 September 2025): Jake Missing scored it 9.3/10 and got the room exactly right: it feels
less like a restaurant and more like a neighbour's kitchen you intend to overstay your welcome in.
3 - Faye Gomes, in her own words (2020):
Food is so much more than cooking. You present a plate of food...It must be presentable. Colourful.
And on the ingredient the whole kitchen turned on:If there's anything better than cassareep, I don't know.
2 - Evening Standard (11 October 2025): Southwark councillor John Batteson on the rescue attempt,
Together with Get Living, we have reached an agreement that provides an opportunity for Castle Square businesses to return.
Gomes never committed to going back.5 - Local rec: Jeff's list, saved off Vittles as a top restaurant for visitors (his note below).
Good to know
- Status: closed at Castle Square. Locked out early October 2025, closure confirmed 5 December 2025. No 2026 address has been reported.
- Which site this page covers: the Elephant & Castle operation run by Faye Gomes, latterly at 40 Elephant Road SE17 1EU, previously a stall inside the old shopping centre. A separate Kaieteur Kitchen trades at 750 Hertford Road, Enfield Lock EN3 6PR, and nothing here describes it.
- What she said she would do: find a commercial kitchen in Southwark or Lambeth and launch a fundraiser. She ran a pop-up on 5 December 2025 and Latin Elephant held a "Walking the Elephant" fundraising walk the next day.
- Dietary: nothing was published by the venue, so nothing is recorded.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "A vittles top restaurant for visitors." REAL.
Verdict
listed — Closed, so it cannot be planned around. Kept on the board because the cooking was documented as among the best in the city: The Infatuation scored it 9.3 and ranked it sixth-best restaurant in London, and Jonathan Nunn called Faye Gomes one of his favourite cooks in London. Guyanese cooking has almost no other sit-down representation here, and pepperpot built on cassareep is a preparation you will not find on another London menu at this level. The record exists so the row is not mistaken for a live pin, and so it can be superseded the day she reopens.