My Neighbours the Dumplings, Lower Clapton Road

My Neighbours the Dumplings is the second of two interesting small-scale new openings on Lower Clapton Road. It's fascinating to observe which restaurants thrive and dive on this strip of road. More than half the new food and drink businesses that have opened here in the last few years have failed, but those that get it right do a roaring trade. P Franco, Yard Sale and 119 Lower Clapton are the big LCR success stories, and My Neighbours the Dumplings has smashed straight into the Top 5.

My Neighbours have been popping up around Hackney for a few years now - a regular gig at Palm 2, a residency on Wilton Way, and then a few nights at Klub Trop. They opened up their permanent place on Lower Clapton in April, and it's been busy every night since then, which is quite unusual without a big name and reputation.

Dumplings here are of the dim sum variety, and are mostly faithful to traditional recipes with a few interesting flourishes and using high quality meat from the Rare Breed Meat Company. Fancy provenance Asian food is proving popular across town (a trend spurred on by my absolute favourite from San Francisco, Mission Chinese Food), and the instant success of MNTD is proof of what a gap in the local market this was.

The menu is relatively short - a few steamed dumplings, a few fried dumplings, a couple of salads, and an assortment of other dishes including fried turnip cake (savvily: a vegetarian and non vegetarian option), steamed whole fish of the day, and crispy pork belly.

The Siu Mai dumpling is the classic pork, prawn and chive steamed dumpling. It is perfectly formed, generously stuffed with tasty filling and comes topped with fish roe.

On the fried front, we love the potstickers - think gyoza with northern Chinese flavours. We have both the lamb and coriander potstickers and the aubergine and sesame. Both deviate far from common expectations about Chinese flavours - the North has a large Muslim population and the cuisine wears the influences of Central Asian countries.

More traditional (and also fried) is the turnip cake. We opt for the meaty version, with pungent Chinese sausage, shiitake and dried shrimp. All of these strong flavours are subtly cut through the turnip cake, chopped fine so as not to distract. This is a couple of levels above the turnip cake at Dalston's long established Shanghai restaurant.

We get six decent size bites of pork belly for £8.50. It's been slow cooked, and is incredibly moist and tender inside while crispy on the outside and full of meaty flavour. The plum sauce is fruity, sour and spicy. The prices generally are a bit more expensive than you'd find in an old school dim sum joint, but the quality of ingredients easily makes up for it. It's still a relatively affordable eat - we end up paying about £26 per person for lots of food and two drinks each.

Drinks include a number of sakes, sake based cocktails, a house red and white from Borough Wines, Asahi beer, and the mildly sake-infused Japanese craft beer Hitachino Nest White Ale. The latter is particularly tasty.

The service is friendly, but slightly overwhelmed later in the evening. The day before they have a four star review in Time Out. It's a blessing, in a way, to not have all your small plates dumped on your table in one go, but there were definitely times we felt like we'd been waiting a while between dishes. It's also quite noisy - the music's pumping, the kitchen is open to the restaurant, and the communal tables notch up their volume accordingly.

With its current popularity I'd advise getting there before 7.30 at the latest to avoid waiting too long for a table. But it's worth it - a great addition to Lower Clapton's food scene.

Fan Tong, Kingsland Road, Dalston

Fan Tong describes itself as a "mostly Chinese" restaurant. It opened quietly on Kingsland Road in November. I was very intrigued, mostly because the last "mostly Chinese" meal I had was at the astounding Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco. It was one of the most exciting meals I've had - amazing cuts of good provenance meat, the bolshiest flavours you can imagine, fusions - in the Californian tradition - that just blew me away, like their glutinous rice cakes with thrice fried bacon, sichuan peppers and spring onions. Oh boy.

With stuff hotting up on the Hackney food scene, and some high-concept restaurants opening in Dalston recently, I had high hopes for Fan Tong - not to be all fancy and exclusive, but to push the boundaries a bit and bring some exciting food to the table.

Fan Tong was much more understated than I expected - it's a had a nice fit out, with a bit of the ol' weathered wood look, but nice benches and a neat little bar with stools, which, on the quiet Friday night that we are there, was more used by the waiting staff to perch between serving.

The menu comprises small plates, side dishes and a couple of noodle soup options. Between our group of six we managed to eat most of the menu. Pickled vegetables were fine, and cucumber dressed in sesame was a measly portion for £3.50. The sesame dressing tasted like tahini without much other seasoning, but there wasn't quite enough to go around in the already small portion.



The sichuan spiced pork with cheong fun was markedly better (and better value) - the pork was deeply flavoured, drizzled in lovely sichuan oils, and over nicely al dente cheong fun - a chewy, thick, boiled glutinous rice  the menu describes as like Chinese pasta. Topped with spring onion, coriander and fresh chilli, it was the explosion of fresh, spicy, cold, hot sloppy, hard flavours and textures that I love. We could have, and should have, ordered a couple more of these.



Also popular among the group were the salt and pepper fried green beans. I mean, who doesn't love battered vegetables, but the crispy coating was full of umami, the beans cooked just right, the dark vinegary, spicy dipping sauce. This dish was great, and a snip at £3.50.



Pork and prawn wontons were heavy on the ginger (a good thing), nicely chewy, and nicely dressed.



Bok choy came steamed, and dressed in oyster sauce. Like with the cucumber in sesame, we all felt like the dressings were a bit too 'off the shelf' - a missed opportunity to lift these dishes up to the next level.



Roast potatoes were a nice addition to the menu - done in classic British style, all crisp and shimmering from an oily roasting. They came artfully squirted with a chilli mayo, which we loved, but like the above dressings, felt could have been a bit more generously applied. We order a second nevertheless.



We ordered a couple of portions of their prawn buns, which were mini-sliders of nicely seasoned, juicy prawns in sweet little buns. We enjoyed the taste, but again thought the portion size was small for the price (£7). It became the theme of the meal - some dishes felt like great value, others poor value. It is an expensive business running a restaurant, especially in a prime bit of E8, where rents are high and business rates correspondingly so. But as seasoned eaters in this part of town, we found the pricing a bit off - sometimes in our favour, sometimes not. And that had a niggling effect throughout the meal.



Much more reasonable were the ramen bowls at £8.50 for the porky option. It was generously filled with strong-flavoured 'pulled' (can we just say slow cooked?!) pork and nicely braised belly. The greens were generous too, and though Fan Tong cheekily advertises these as packet noodles, they were perfect for the purpose. Having just eaten at Tonkotsu Mare Street, the broth didn't compare, but the soft boiled, seasoned eggs were a pretty fair match.



We ended the meal on a high with salted caramel (klaxon!) doughnuts, freshly fried, stuffed with the gorgeous sticky stuff and doused in it too. A big scoop of vanilla was a good antidote to the richness of all that caramel. With five little balls in each portion, this was another steal at £4.



Service was friendly and helpful, but the place wasn't quite buzzing. It had a feel of people just happening to be there, rather than people purposefully seeking it out or being established locals checking out their new neighbourhood restaurant. We saw passers-by examining the menu in the window, weighing up whether to come in or try somewhere else on the strip - some taking a seat, dwelling a sec, and then leaving again to try their luck elsewhere.

It struck me that when a road becomes a destination, restaurants pull in a number of different ways - they become over-the-top conceptual experiences, stalwarts that do their thing well and locals and incomers keep coming back, or the kind of place that soaks up the newbie passing trade when people don't know about or can't get a table at the former two types. As it stands, Fan Tong is clearly too good to be a generic tourist trap, but not quite consistently impressive to become a stalwart or a destination. It's still worth a visit if your order wisely, and I hope it finds its potential over the coming months.

Eating Mission

Hackney is a great place to live as a food lover, because it offers such variety. As a neighbourhood in transition, there are so many parts to its history and culture that lead to tasty food - Vietnamese, Turkish and Caribbean restaurants from waves of people who settled here, fancy innovative restaurants, greasy spoon cafes, greasy luxe junk food. It's all here.

So when I stay in other big cities I seek out neighbourhoods that have similar characteristic. The Mission is San Francisco's neighbourhood in transition. A veritable multicultural hub where people from all walks of life seem to rub along just fine. Happily, it has one of San Francisco's best micro-climates: it is often sunny while other parts of the city are shrouded in fog and drizzle.

The Mission did us very well for eating, and here are some of my favourite spots. See also my street food post for more Mission treats.

Taqueria Cancun
It's no shadow of a lie that you can't move in Mission for amazing Mexican food. Mission Street in particular is home to dozens of brilliant taqueiras, some open 24 hours a day, serving up fresh and authentic Mexican food that would have Londoners queueing around the block and throwing money at. We ended up at Cancun on our first night in a jetlagged fug, and had shrimp burrito, pork carnita super tacos, and the veggie equivalents.



It was good honest Mexican comfort food at its best, incredible ingredients, creamy thick slices of avocado, punchy home made salsas and constantly replenishing taco chips. This is probably bog standard as far as Mission taqueiras are concerned, but it was lovely, warm, fresh and filling.

Mission Chinese Food

It's a concept screaming out for wider adoption - ramshackle DIY vibe, innovative and punky spins on Chinese food. We had cumin rubbed pungent lamb ribs, thrice cooked bacon and rice cakes, curried fried rice with pork, crab and pineapple, and some small plates with different coloured potatoes, pickles and heirloom tomatoes, pickled peanuts, pickles. All very on trend locally sourced, seasonal, old cuts meets Asian spices and flavours.

As you might expect, it's walk-ins only, but works a bit better than London because there's a list and you get a well approximated waiting time, so it's enough time to get a drink somewhere warm while you wait. Although maybe we have queues in London because we like queueing?


Limon Rotisserie
"It's our version of Nando's" a San Franciscan very incorrectly told me. No, it's so much better. Sure, it's a mid-range mini chain serving up (rotisserie, in this case) chicken. But Limon is renowned for it's affordable, tasty ceviche. We had their mixed cold ceviche (prawns, calamari, white fish), their mixed hot ceviche (all of the same ingredients, but FRIED, and served with a spicy, aromatic dippy dressing.  Some of the best I've had, and at a fair price.



The chicken was tasty, as were the sides of fried yucca, sweet potato fries, truffled mac and cheese, and a so so San Franciscan deconstructed Russian salad with purple potatoes, local beetroot, shredded carrot, avo and aioli. We also enjoyed expertly mixed, frothy pisco sours. If only Nando's Dalston mixed up a good pisco sours. If only.


Bar Tartine
San Francisco is famous for being the birthplace of California cuisine, which is all about eating locally and seasonally, but blending the influences of indiginous and incomer. It tends to be pretty pricey, but there's good value to be found. We opted for Bar Tartine for our final meal in San Francisco, following a recommendation from a trusted foodie.





The combinations were so complex and specific that I've long forgotten them. The pictures speak for themselves, really, but some of the highlights included: salmon three ways in buttermilk; seedy, herby flatbread with amazing hummus and dukkah; assortments of pickles in jars; kale with seeds and homemade yoghurt (so so SF); tripe in a paprika broth; and cheese dumplings in a chanterelle stew.



The waiting staff were incredibly knowledgeable, the vibe jovial, the winelist very nicely put together with lots of local Californian wines. It was the perfect place to experience San Francisco's haute cuisine without breaking the bank.

Dim sum ...and then some...

I do love dim sum - those novel little packages of flavours, the ceremony of sharing dishes, the antiquity of the bamboo containers, the ritual of chopsticks, tea and soy sauce, celebrating each morsel for what it is. Yum.

China Town in central London is the obvious place to have a tasty dim sum meal, and places like New World are a fun experience, with waiting staffing pushing round trolleys coming round with dim sum offerings. Like an old school Yo Sushi. But there's dim sum life outside WC2 and in the last couple of months I have had some excellent dim sum at Yum Cha in Chalk Farm and Shanghai down the road in Dalston.

I went to Yum Cha on a warm Saturday evening before heading to a gig nearby. We had the most tender spare ribs in a rich mandarin sauce, juicy deep fried squid, prawn and pork dumblings, steamed honey roast pork bun, chicken shrimp and rice wrapped and steamed in a lotus leaf. All were fresh and authentic, and very good value for money when the bill came in at £11 each including a beer.







Yum Cha is quite a big place and wasn't too busy, considering that it's slap bang in the middle of Camden Town and is very affordable. If you live in the area, they do dim sum delivery - a novel concept.

For Pete's birthday I took him out for a dim sum lunch at Shanghai on Kingsland High Street in Dalston. We rocked up at about half two on a bustling Saturday afternoon, the main road brimming with all walks of life and the extremists: extreme hipsters, extreme evangelists, extreme Communists. Shanghai, a former eel, pie and mash shop is all tiled walls and tiled floors - a hangover from when Hackney was the main domain of the Cockneys. Some of the tables are in benches and booths in that front section, but the majority of the restaurant is in a fairly traditional parlour style restaurant with chintzy décor and linen table cloths.

The dim sum was totally top notch. We had fried cuttlefish and coriander cakes, which were salty, juicy and chewy in perfect proportions and served with a shallow dish of broth for dipping. The chicken spring rolls had real, discernible (!) bits of chicken and were packed full of tasty bits. Steamed buns with barbecued pork were soft, fluffy and then sticky in the middle and very satisfying, and the steamed dumplings (vegetable dumplings in carrot juice pastry, crystal prawn dumplings, steamed minced meat & chive dumplings) were also perfectly formed and flavoured.





The bill was a scandalously good value £18 for six dim sum portion, drinks and service. And there are savings to be had if you go for dim sum between 3 - 5pm, even on weekends. Utterly scandalous for such delicious food. Being just 10 minutes walk from my flat, I know I'm going to be a regular diner at Shanghai!