Hackney's best new restaurants 2015

Hackney's dining scene just keeps growing and developing, showing only the slightest signs of slowing down. While in 2013 and 2014 the pace of change felt astonishing and exhausting, by now it feels that this is how Hackney's going to be for a while.

That quiet acceptance was disrupted briefly by the Fuck Parade protesters who sought to highlight the effects of gentrification by bottling the lamely iconic Cereal Killer Cafe on Brick Lane. It was an easy, high profile target but the reality is that most places opening in Hackney will be unaffordable for people without much spare income. Intimidating small business owners and their customers won't change that reality (only radical political action can), but I hope businesses and individuals reflect on how they impact on their less fortunate neighbours.

2015 felt like a year of maturing, with a significant number of high quality new openings from established and inventive chefs. We've seen the rise of modern, crisp, playful bistros – my favourite being Brooksby's Walk, and I'm confident that the much praised Pidgin on Wilton Way and newer Ellory in London Fields will knock my socks off when I have some spare cash/time to check them out. The Mare Street/London Fields axis seems to be where most of the fancier places are opening.


Parmesan Pannacotta at Brooksby's Walk.

As I blogged yesterday, Middle Eastern food is on the up, as are venues doing a bit more than just serving you food – I loved the clubby atmosphere at Berber & Q, the camp metal at Black Axe Mangal and the live jazz at Jackdaw in Clapton. We've also seen specialist restaurants opening all over Hackney – sushi at Uchi, ramen at Tonkotsu, Japanese yakitori skewers at Jidori, jerk meat at Rudie's in Dalston, lobster (obvs) at the Lobster Bar on Richmond Road.


Softshell crab sushi at Uchi.

I predicted last year that the neighbourhoods adjacent to Hackney would see their restaurant options broaden as more priced out young professionals moved in. That's certainly been the case, with just a bit of Hackney export about some of the openings. Clapton businesses Sodo and Clapton Craft are due to open in Walthamstow in the new year, haggis pushers Deeney's have opened a cafe in Leyton after running toastie stalls in Broadway Market and Chatsworth Road for severeal years, and Tottenham has now got Chicken Town – healthy, fancy fried chicken with a social conscious, with Giorgio Ravelli, Head Chef at Clapton/Homerton's Brooksby's Walk, as Executive Chef.

Tired, established streets like Stoke Newington Church Street and Islington's Upper Street have seen a renaissance after years of derivative, generic restaurants opening. Church Street has had the highly regarded the Good Egg open, along with Escosesa – an intriguing Scottish-Spanish seafood restaurant, and some fancy pie shops and wine bars ae on their way. Meanwhile, Islington has had high profile new openings like Oldroyd, Alsatian brasserie Bellanger and the ridiculously fun Black Axe Mangal.

Less established streets have also seen big booms. Well Street in Homerton stands out as seeing some of the most striking change – a sourdough pizzeria and cocktail bar in a former laundrette have opened, while most of the change in Clapton has been on Lower Clapton Road where Rootdown, Blondies, Jackdaw, Ten Ten, Klub Trop have opened, soon to be joined by dim sum restaurant My Neighbours the Dumplings. Notably many businesses on this stretch appear pretty quiet mid-week, suggesting there's not quite the level of demand in Clapton for so many restaurants and bars, especially when there are already many strong local favourites, like Verden and Shane's.


Lamb belly at Jackdaw.

In 2014 we saw a number of independent but derivative restaurants opportunistically open in Hackney, and in 2015 the trend has been towards the new generation of 'trendy' mid-range chains on a roll out. Honest Burger has opened in Old Street and soon Dalston, Franco Manca opened in Broadway Market and soon Stoke Newington, Foxlow from the Hawksmoor group opened in Stoke Newington before rollin' rollin' out to other yummy 'burbs like Balham and Chiswick.

I expect things to slow down a bit more in 2016. I think we're closing in on saturation point in Hackney, and only restaurants who understand and offer value to the local market will survive. Big name new openings from the Moro crew on Hackney Road and Lucky Chip on Ridley Road are likely to do well, but wacky or pretentious 'concepts' chasing a Dalstonist headline are unlikely be sustainable businesses if they don't deliver the goods.


Lamb at Moro.

We'll see more of the neighbourhood bistro format, more trumpeting of the provenance of ingredients and drinks, more pushing at the boundaries of 'traditional' cuisines. I'd expect to see Walthamstow to get a few more 'grown up' restaurants, and see a few more independent options open up in Leyton, Leytonstone, Forest Gate and Tottenham. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a few more specialist food shops open in North East London – we have some great beer and wine shops, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a fancy cheesemonger or fishmonger open up this year.

Taberna do Mercado, Spitalfields, Commercial Street

I recently turned thirty, which is the perfect excuse for a slap up meal. I've been cutting back recently due to an enormous building project at home. It's also the reason that I haven't been blogging much recently. I've been without proper facilities for three months now, and the extra effort required to do everyday tasks, on top of the constant decision-making, has just sapped so much of my energy for anything fun, like writing about food.

But I'm coming out of my slumber to write about Taberna do Mercado, Nuno Mendes' new restaurant. Yes, he of Chiltern Firehouse fame. Chiltern Firehouse may be what he's now best known for, but its prices and glitz seem out of character for Mendes, whose building block gigs at Viajante and the Loft Project were more low key and allowed the food to do the talking.

Ironically perhaps, Mendes' new joint Taberna do Mercado is his most down to earth yet. It's a Portuguese market canteen, on the edge of Spitalfields Market. Simple little restaurants in produce markets are the real deal in Portugal (where I'm half from) - it's where you'll see local nanas having a snack of seafood, or a friendly business meeting over a sandwich (prego), along with a crisp white wine or small glass of beer. The situation and menu of Taberna do Mercado are a big nod to that tradition.

The menu has cheese and cured meats, "tinned" fish, snacks, a couple of sandwiches, a reasonable selection of small plates, and a handful of eggy desserts. It's a whistlestop tour of Portuguese cuisine, which is warm and familiar to me, but not to many in London. Every dish has an extra twist of cheffy sophistication, an extra complexity or layer of flavour, than you'd expect from a classic Lisbon restaurant.

We ordered our food bit by bit, as it can come relatively quickly after you order. We started with lightly battered green beans (a dish my mum loves to make), which were perfectly crisp and came on top of a little bowl of a cool broth, which tasted of toasted onions. The rissois - crisp triangles stuffed with prawn and prawn flavoured roux - are another Portuguese classic, and the darker, crisper coating, the juicy prawns and richer seafoody roux inside made these the best I'd had.



The "tinned" fish menu has a number of delicious sounding options, but we went for cod cheeks with a sweet, paprika sauce. The fish is cooked, marinaded and served in a tin - in homage to the tinned seafood shacks of Portugal. Served with crunchy thins of cauliflower and toasted thick Portuguese bread, we devoured every last speck of this dish, spooning the sweet flavoured oil onto the bread when it would not soak up any more.



A fennel and asparagus migas had a great contrast between the crunchy textures and zingy, fresh flavours of the vegetables, and the rich, lardy, moist migas - breadcrumbs fried up with any number of ingredients and flavours with stock and oil, ending up tasting somewhere between dumplings and a hash.



A pig trotter and cuttlefish coentrada is a rich broth is creamy and full of porky flavour - almost like a ramen. The pig trotter meat is pungent, and the cuttle fish is perfectly cooked - just chewy enough, but till fresh tasting and not the least bit rubbery. Generous scatterings of micro coriander make this taste very Portuguese - that delicious mixture of pork, seafood and the fragrant aromas of fresh greens. The sauce is so perfect we order more bread to soak it up.



We finish our savoury voyage with a prego roll, with steak, watercress-like crunchy greens and a spicy, fragrant peppery sauce. The roll is incredibly authentic, slightly sour, crispy and lathered in butter. The steak is perfectly cooked, and the red peppery sauce mixes with the butter and echoes the taste of the classic bifana sandwich.



Portion are not too big, and the prices are just on the pricey side of keen. Ordering an extra bread was key to keeping my other half assured that he wasn't going to spend all that money and leave hungry.

On the plus side it means you certainly have time for dessert. Sweets are a big deal in Portugal, especially when they're made of egg yolk and dusted with cinnamon. As with everything else, the desserts at Taberna do Mercado manage to be both convincingly homely and next level. We shared a warm olive oil and egg cake, half cooked in parchment paper, so that it's crisp on top, gooey in the middle, wallowing with grade A olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. The fruitiness and the acidity of the olive oil stand out, and are gently balanced by the sugar in the cake. It's impeccable.



However, we're still not full and our waitress informs us that there's a dish that's proving a hit on instagram. We order it and 'gram it, naturally. Egg yolk is mixed with pork fat to make a particularly rich congealed custard slabs. It holds solidly, cuts easily, and is complemented with a thin, lightly sweet Port sauce with drops of fruity olive oil and flecks of sea salt.




The winelist is entirely Portuguese, and it's well priced with bottles starting in the early twenties. There's a good spread of regions covered, and with much available by the glass, so it offers a great chance to sample lots of interesting wines from across this not yet fully appreciated country.

The waiting staff are well briefed on the dishes and wines and were incredibly friendly, if not fully attentive - there were a few too many times where we all but disappeared from their consciousness, and it took minutes of craning and embarrassing signally. On the plus side, their 'no reservations' policy works well in practice - we waltzed to an outside table at 6.30 on a Tuesday, and were brought inside when a table became available. For later arrivals, punters' numbers were taken and they were called back when it was free.

Taberna do Mercado works well. The dishes are homely and unpretentious, while being painstakingly conceived and refined. The feel is informal and welcoming, and yet this is a chef who's best known for a restaurant in a flash hotel that has paparazzi stationed outside every evening. The cost may ratchet up (we ate and drank well and it came to just shy of £50 a head including service), but this is all top provenance cooking where every detail counts. The five star reviews are rolling in, so make sure you're early if you want to snap up a table without a wait.

Bad Egg, City Point, Moorgate

The City of London is a bit of a dead spot for decent eating, especially if you do not have a big corporate expense account. Bad Egg, situated in the semi-mall in the sanitised bowels of City Point, is a bit of an anomaly. With its stripped back industrial look and neon signage, it would be more at home in Soho or Dalston. But it's here, surrounded by Wagamamas and Pitcher and Pianos for the undiscerning City crowd.

Considering the buzz about it, thanks to its delicious sounding menu and the fact that it's owned by the Smokehouse's Neil Rankin, it's surprisingly not heaving on the payday Friday evening we visit. That said, it's only been open a month, it's a freezing cold January night, and they've only just started taking bookings in the evening. That's a good move - I imagine punters prefer the certainty of a table if they're heading to a neighbourhood with few other decent options.

Bad Egg is well worth the trip. It's a fancy, innovative take on the short order diner, with a menu of American, Mexican and Asian flavoured dishes. It's quite simple: there are eggs, burgers, ribs, fries, tacos and side salads, but every dish is a couple of levels above what you'd expect.

The ribs were incredible. The meat was slow cooked and full of deep flavours, then deep fried to give it a crunchy coated bite. One big rib is your portion, and there was lots of meat and not much bone. I ordered the buffalo rib, with a spicy peppery sauce and a blue cheese dip. A classic combination and well done. My friend had the Korean rib which was smothered in a sticky soy, ginger and gochujang sauce.





Korean flavour make a good few appearances on the menu. We order pulled pork and kimchi fries, which have big pulls of moist, smoky, pungent pork, coated in a kimchi dressing rather than discernible bits of kimchi. Very nice.



The selection of side salads was an impressive counter-balance to the salty, meaty dude food. A Korean slaw was a spicy, zingy kimchi-led salad, with a nice combination of textures thanks to the slimy kimchi and crispy cabbage. A kale and shiitake mushroom salad was our highlight of the plate (any 3 salads for £10), it came in a sweet gingery dressing and topped with toasted hazelnuts.



Neil Rankin has been keen to quash talk among pundits that this is some gimmicky egg themed restaurant. I've got this far without mentioning them, but the eggs are great and they make some stunning appearances in the dishes. The Bad Oeuf burger is a thick medium rare beef patty in a brioche bun, mustard and pickles. But a soft egg yolk and a cheese fondue on top of the patty elevate this beyond your wildest dreams. I'd become a bit jaded with gourmet burgers, but this was something special.



The nduja cheese and fried egg fries are a spin on dirty or chilli cheese fries. The yolk was deep orange and runny, and when chopped up and folded into the molten cheese was something special. The cheese was styled like that plastic Kraft cheese, but I suspect the chefs made it themselves from a carefully chosen combination of real cheeses. My only disappointment of the meal was that the nduja - a spicy, spreadable sausage from Calabria - was not more prominent. I love its strong flavour, but I didn't feel there was enough of it in the dish to really taste its unique fiery punch, especially against the strong flavours in other dishes.



On the Mexican side, my friend's chilaquiles - corn tacos loaded with a fried egg and generous quantities of, salsa, guacamole and goat curd, which was a mild offset to spicy peppers. Another friend's "chicken fried" fish tacos were tasty, but more a snack than a main dish.



Cocktails combine top quality spirits and offbeat mixers and result in surprising concoctions. My Argy Bhaji combined curried apricots, ginger beer and Kamms & Sons liqueur. The gin cocktail combined clementine and sage, and the fantastically titled Misplaced American Arrogance arrogantly mixed Illegal Mezcal and smoky liqueurs for an out of this world taste.

Bad Egg didn't plan on doing desserts, but a waiter said they were working on a dessert menu now. Wise, I think, as a salty, meaty gorging is neatly followed by a sweet kick to power you home, and a lack of decent options in the area means you will need to travel a couple of miles for something half decent. We enjoyed their dulce de leche and peanut butter milkshakes. One between two is certainly enough.

Weekend brunches start in mid February, and it will be worth making the trip. We loved pretty much everything about Bad Egg, and I'll be back to try more from the menu. Now that you can book in the evenings, I suspect more people will venture over for a good filling. We ate well and had a couple of drink each, and it came to £31 a head including tip, which seemed a fair price for the quality, quantity and location.

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.

Tonkotsu, Mare Street, Hackney

The pace of change in Hackney doesn't fail to astound even the hardiest of observers. And the opening of Tonkotsu on Narrow Way is a case in point.

Little more than a year ago pretty much every bus in North East London passed through that single lane road with a narrow pavement either side. Sometimes they'd be queued up the length of the road, with cyclists scraping along the sides, shoppers squeezing between the buses to cross the road, everyone inhaling the noxious diesel fumes. 

Hackney Council pedestrianised the road in the face of resistance from business owners, concerned that nobody would come to visit the street without all these buses chugging down it. On a Saturday afternoon, Narrow Way is now bustling - more so than before. It's now a pleasant place to be. The shops down Narrow Way are not fancy by Hackney's standards: there are big chains like Primark, McDonalds, Greggs and a sad Marks and Spencer, alongside betting shops, newsagents, bakeries, gold shops, pawnbrokers. It works just fine without vintage denim boutiques and organic wooden spoon shops.

Tonkotsu is the first fancy new business to open up on Narrow Way. The shop used to be a dingy, beige Post Office - and before you get your gentrifier-skewering pitchforks out, it's only moved up the road to a shiny new shop. The unit has been opened all the way back, with just an unobtrusive, plain glass front revealing to the passerby its new purpose. At the front is a long bar, which leads you to a loungey section with semi-circular leather banquettes around tables, before you get to a more canteen-y space with a glass boxed noodle-making room and an open kitchen alongside it it. Ropes are strung across the ceiling like noodles being pulled. It's pretty neat actually.



Ramen is booming in London, and Tonkotsu was one of the first of this spurt. As with most hypey booms, ramen has become aficionado territory, and some people will give you chapter and verse on different restaurants' broths and noodles. I'm no expert, but when I tasted the Tonkotsu broth I knew it was something special. So rich with meatiness that it's almost creamy, Tonkotsu's broth is velvety, luxurious, pungent. The noodles -made on site in the aforementioned glass boxed noodle room - were al dente, which I liked, but my fellow diners would have preferred a slightly softer noodle.

There is a concise menu of ramen - the Tonkotsu is the classic pork ramen with a pork broth, with generous sheeths of delicious pork belly, with deep flavoured bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and THE MOST INCREDIBLE seasoned slow boiled egg.



My friends each had the seafood ramen - a special for this branch of Tonkotsu. It had a couple of juicy prawns, a handful of fresh clams, some squid, as well as bean sprouts and bamboo shoots. The broth was a mixture of sea food and chicken, and was less thick and creamy than the pork broth, but delicious nonetheless.



A further two ramen dishes are available: chilli chicken, and miso and shitake mushroom. Prices range from £9 - £11, and they will pretty much fill you up.

There are a number of sides on the menu. As we were there during soft launch, a few that we were particularly keen to try were sold out. Namely the okonomiyaki, the Japanese cabbage and kelp pancake, which is a special for the Mare Street restaurant, but has been an E5 delicacy for some time thanks to the ace Sho Foo Doh, who has a Thursday - Saturday okonomiyaki residency 100 metres away at Pacific Social Club. I love it there, so I was keen to see how Tonkotsu's compared.

Edamame beans were hard to fault, and I enjoyed the Shimeji mushroom korokke - creamy croquette balls, with shitake mushroom inside, on a bed of tart mayo. Yum. We were less impressed by the pork gyoza, which were quite lightly filled and under-seasoned.



The kara-age chicken - the Japanese spin on fried chicken, whereby the chicken is brined in soy suace, ginger and garlic before getting crisply fried - was perfectly juicy inside, and had a crunchy coating without any clagginess. I thought the kara-age chicken from the Paddy Field stall on Chatsworth Road's Sunday market had the slight edge on flavour, but Tonkotsu's are perfectly good.



The dessert menu consists of one excellent dish: a selection of mochi-encased ice cream balls. Mochi is a squidgy, slightly aromatic glutinous rice based sweet. Sometimes it's fashioned into fruit shapes, but here it contained salted caramel (natch), vanilla and yuzu - an Asian citrus fruit. My favourite was the yuzu, which was almost champagne-y in taste with a tart citrus-y freshness to it.



Tonkotsu Mare Street does last orders at 11, so good for a quick supper before going out, a proper meal, and a post pub filler-upper. Prices are  reasonable, including for cocktails, where many are around the £7 mark, and the menu is extensive. We particularly enjoyed their twist on a whiskey sour with sake.

I expect Tonkotsu will be busy if the level of interest generated by the soft launch was anything to go by. Despite okonomiyaki being available up the road, everything else about it is fairly unique for the surrounding area. Whether or not Narrow Way becomes a foodie/boozy destination remains to be seen; I expect many restaurateurs will watch Tonkotsu's trade closely, but of course part of the appeal is being one of a small number of such businesses, rather than a street flooded with generic restaurants. In any case I hope Narrow Way continues to be a street that serves everyone.

Hackney's best new restaurants 2014

I started off 2014 predicting that the Mare Street and Lower Clapton Road axis in Hackney would flourish with exciting new restaurants, becoming more of a destination for eating and drinking out. And lo it came to pass: the area saw an unprecedented amount of new openings, not just on the main axes, but in the surrounding areas of Homerton, Hackney Downs, and around Dalston Lane.

Lower Clapton Road has changed the most - and going through the list of new (food) openings in the last year, let alone all the other shops that have opened, makes me feel exhausted. New restaurants have been distinctly classy and grown up, with Verden, Little Ivy's, the Bonneville, Yard Sale and Pie Franco opening within a few months of each other and attracting praise, custom and occasionally controversy from across London, and even in national press. Meanwhile supper clubs upstairs at Palm 2 seem to do a roaring trade, and Candela has come and gone. Over on Chatsworth Road, the big news was the opening of the luxury Spar supermarket, with a fancy (and actually very good) burger bar and a luxury restaurant upstairs.



Down Mare Street way, Raw Duck's opening at a bigger premises on Richmond Road was met with widespread acclaim, while Broadway Market has seen new openings from sourdough pizza kings Franco Manca, snazzy butchers Hill and Szrok, the revamped Cat and Mutton, and fancy Thai  residency Som Saa.



Further south, Paradise Row in Bethnal Green is newly home to a handful of new restaurants and bars located under its arches, most notably Mission E2 - a wine bar and restaurant, with a giant palm tree inside and impressive selection of well-priced Californian wines.



Towards Hackney Downs, Lardo have opened up a petite pizza restaurant off Amhurst Road, Hash E8 on Dalston Lane has become my favourite spot for a porky brunch, and Hand of Glory is a gorgeous pub with great beers on tap and high quality kitchen residencies. You'd never know it was 5 mins from Kingsland High Street.



Homerton's new openings have been mostly pubs - the Adam and Eve and the Jackdaw and Star joining The Plough on Homerton High Street, while the Gun on Well Street is a lovely little saloon bar.

Dalston continues to see lots of new openings, including mid-market chains like The Diner, Premier Inn and Costa Coffee. The more interesting restaurants open off the main drag of Kingsland High Street. Steve Parle's Rotorino has brought fancy Italian cooking further down Kingsland Road near the intriguing-sounding Fan Tong, Lucky Chip have got a permanent space in a disused car park just off Dalston Lane, and the Pond has brought the tortuous concept of modern Hawaiian cuisine to a fully decked out warehouse off Gillet Square.

But with all the hype and excitement comes a new band of generic, half-arsed restaurants ready to ape an aesthetic to blend in to New Hipster Hackney. Chatsworth Road in Clapton now has three such restaurants and cafes, Lower Clapton Road a couple too - with exposed brick, industrial fittings, ramshackle furniture and slightly too loud music all there to distract you from the average quality, average price food you're getting. It's old hat for Stoke Newington and Dalston, which have housed generic 'trendy' restaurants for some time, as investors piggy back on the coattails of more interesting new businesses.

It's been the year of the backlash too. In 2013 and 2014 house prices in Hackney grew by almost 50%, rents by a similar amount. The number of restaurants and cafes opened could well represent a doubling or tripling of what was there in 2012 in some parts of the borough, as Hackney firmly becomes, and feels like, a more expensive kind of place. In one of the poorest areas in the country, basic living costs are increasing as benefits are cut and low wages stagnant - and the streets and faces are changing dramatically. Combined with suburban disdain for l'hipster, restaurants and cafes in East London quickly feel the heat of the spotlight when they respond insensitively.

I don't believe that this pace of change can continue. I see the last two years as a mega adjustment, and I expect to see a lower number of new restaurants opening in 2015, but with a few trends...

The Mare Street axis will continue to gentrify apace. The kind of snazzy restaurants opening in Dalston, Haggerston and Shoreditch will make their way to the arch spaces around London Fields station, such as the fancy-sounding Il Cudega, which will specialise in the cuisine of the Lombardia region. Further up, the fancy ramen joint Tonkotsu is set to open on Narrow Way in January. It will be the first of its kind to open on this stretch, and could pave the way for other restaurateurs drawn to the road's scruffy, slightly down-at-heal charm. New openings in the Mare Street area will be fuelled by the impending arrival of the Hackney Fashion Hub, which will seem a lot more tangible as 2015 trucks on.

Asian and fusion flavours will have a greater influence. You can't move for modern British, pizza, burgers and dude food, and there's plenty of French and Turkish cuisine to be had. Despite a long tradition of Vietnamese restaurants opening on Kingsland Road and Mare Street, we're only starting to see the influence of Asian flavours in a small number of newer openings, such as Rita's and Raw Duck. Dalston newbie Fan Tong appears to be fusing eclectic Asian flavours with British ingredients, and I'd expect to see a bit more of this in some of 2015's more interesting new openings. Bring on the kimchi!

More interesting openings outside of Hackney. Areas like Walthamstow and Leytonstone have both old and new interesting restaurants, but places like Tottenham, Leyton and Forest Gate have seen less of the new. As more people are priced out of Hackney AND Walthamstow AND Leytonstone, I'd expect a sourdough pizza restaurant or two to open in these parts of town.

More chains and more generics. As business rents increase, it will be harder for small businesses to afford to offer quality, interesting food at a price people are willing to pay. This means more low quality generic restaurants will open, skimping on ingredient quality to meet demand. Not necessarily overlappingly, mid-market chains will find their model at an advantage in the area. Nando's, Costa and The Diner are already in the area, and I wouldn't be surprised if a Pizza Express or similar opens on Stoke Newington Church Street or on the ground floor of a Dalston new build development.

Andina, Shoreditch High Street

Peruvian cuisine has had a buzz about it for a few years now. We've had some quite high end openings over in W1, and a few more rustic versions popping up over in Clapton and Essex Road. In San Francisco, Peruvian cuisine has firmly hit the upper middle market with a wonderful mini chain called Limon, and a recent opening in Shoreditch, Andina, may be the start of a mainstream, quality, accessible Peruvian cuisine in London.

Andina opened just before Christmas without too much hype, but the good reviews started rolling in and it's pretty much booked up all night, every night. There are good reasons for this: despite its Shoreditch setting, it is very down-to-earth and chummy - no surly hipsters ogling their own tattoos, but happy, attentive staff, excited about the menu, explaining the options and telling you about their favourites.

The centrepiece of the menu is clearly the ceviche - marinated and cured fish and seafood. At its most basic, ceviche can be just lime juice, chilli and some finely diced onions, maybe a bit of coconut milk. At Andina, crispy bits of corn, avocado, sweet potato, pecan and goldenberries (physallis) all make an appearance, and the subject matter include trendy cod cheek, thinly sliced hake, sea bass, and even a beef carpaccio version and a wild mushroom option for the vegetarians.






The flavours and the freshness are out of this world. Top quality ingredients are used, the portions of the good stuff are generous (in other places I've found scallops and prawns diced so finely you'd hardly notice they were there), and you don't feel in the slightest cheated by the £8 price tag. Smooth.

In a rookie but delicious error my dining buddy and I both ordered the same main: Aji de Gallina, which was an incredible, complex, thick sauce with ground pecan, chillies, spices, shredded chicken, a hard boiled egg, a succulent quinoa coated fried chicken drumstick, all on top of some rice. It was hearty, filling but saved from stodge by all the interesting flavours.



All of this washed down very well with perfectly made pisco sours: a drink designed to be re-ordered.

We didn't have much room for dessert, and my Latin American blood knows how good those eggy, creamy desserts can be. But we figured we'd just about be able to squeeze in a sharing platter of pumpkin doughnuts. Fresh out the fryer, served with two hot dipping sauces: one cinnamon, one chocolate. Both incredible, and the doughnuts were some of the best I've had (and I've had a few).



We didn't hold back and the bill came to over £40 a head with tips, but it'd be easy to spend closer to £25 - £30 ahead with a bit more discipline and sharing. We're glad we didn't, though: it still felt like good value for the quality of the food and drinks, generous, portions, top ingredients and warm service.

Andina do an interesting looking brunch too, with brightly coloured healthy juices, more eggs, etc. Booking is essential at any time of day - but it's nice and easy using their online booking system, and at least when we were there, no table turning was going on. All in, Andina is a very welcome addition to Shoreditch's maturing restaurant scene.

Hackney 2013/14 and Rita's Bar and Dining

Hackney saw an amazing array of restaurants open in 2013, cementing the borough's reputation as a proper foodie centre in London.

While the Kingsland Road axis has seen all the focus in recent years, with Stoke Newington, Dalston and the lower end of Kingsland Road now well established eating out destinations, a lot of the more interesting places opening last year were on the easterly Mare Street axis.

Mayfields, just off Wilson Way, has had rave reviews, while Raw Duck got locals very excited with its small plates and excellent wine selections before it very sadly slid into the construction site of the Travelodge next door. RIP Raw Duck, Hackney hopes you fightback soon. Further down, we've seen a Mexican restaurant join Lardo on Richmond Road, and then past the long established Vietnamese and Ocakbasi restaurants before reaching Well Street junction where the well priced French bistro Bouchon Fourchette sits alongside accidentally controversial The Advisory and then Rita's Bar and Dining. And it was here that I had one of the best meals of the year.

Rita's, of course, made its name over in Dalston in 2012, where it was the first residency in the kitchen at Birthdays. It was a no reservations job, and swarms of haircuts and beards filled the bar and the street outside waiting to get a table. I went, and loved it, and so was delighted to hear the Rita's team had eschewed Kingsland Road for the more grown up, low key, harder-for-Claphamites-to-get-to Mare Street.

Its new venue is gorgeous. It is long and thin, with just a tiny little anonymous front onto the street, Inside it has high ceilings, white walls, and the space flows nicely back, past a bar, through to the kitchen, which is open plan to the rear of the restaurant. We were there on a Friday evening, and house-y beats were just loud enough to create a fun atmosphere. Downstairs, things are much cosier in a low-lit dining room.

Rita's was first noted for doing 'junk food luxe' or whatever you want to call it, but that doesn't do it justice. There are a lot of Asian influences - miso aubergine, Szechuan peppers here and there, hoisin sauce, Asian  vinegars, gingers and soys. The fusion of Southern comforts and zingy Asian flavours is a recurring theme among some of the more exciting food I've had recently - Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco, Dante Fried Chicken in Los Angeles (and his game-changing recipe book Ride or Fry), and Kimchinary's Korean style burritos in London.

We enjoyed Succotash, a dish cooked up by Native Americans originally, given a bit of a twist with edamame beans, pumpkin and some chilli and spring onions gave it a fresh and feisty Asian twist. Pork belly cooked in black vinegar, served with poached spring onion, aromatic herbs and chilli, played to a similar palate.

Due to my dining partner needing to 'carb up' for a bike ride the next day, we missed some of the lighter dishes that I fancied, but the signature mac'n'cheese topped with gauacamole didn't disappoint, and neither did the crispy fried potato.

But we did get to enjoy a massive plate of some of the best fried chicken I've had - made with crispy fried chicken skin ground in with the coating, following an old Central European Jewish technique. It was a whole chicken, cut into bits and served with maple syrup and a sausage-y, lardy gravy. They do that combo over waffles at breakfast too, which I had on a separate occasion and was delicious.

We finished with beignets - New Orleans style doughnuts - served with dulce de leche. We could have opted to have had foie gras with them, but we were so stuffed could barely manage the richness of the 'basic' beignets.

I've already been back once since my big visit, and with a regularly evolving menu, lots of interesting specials, and those pies still to enjoy, I get the feeling Rita's will be a regular haunt for 2014.

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So if 2013 was about new openings in Hackney Central and the Mare Street axis, where is likely to see exciting new openings in 2014?

I expect that 2014 will see Lower Clapton Road and Hackney Wick as the places to watch for new restaurants. Rumours are abound in Clapton already, whose new offerings already include creative Latin cuisine, and with some more Modern British, a wine bar, and both traditional and fancy Turkish in the pipeline.

Hackney Wick has seen some great pop ups over the last year, and has noticeably become more of a nightlife destination. There are so many great nooks and crannies by the river, it's only a matter of time bebefore the Wick goes from pop up to perm.

Meanwhile, Stoke Newington could have its fourth wave, as some interesting places open on the High Street. Rents on Church Street are too pricey for innovative new restaurants to open, and too many of the newer openings are mediocre.

It will be interesting to see what's going on in North East London more generally. Will the likes of Walthamstow, Leyton and Tottenham, which are getting Hackney spillover (as it becomes too bloody pricey), see good new eating spots open? I look forward to seeing what foodie adventures our corner of London offers up over the coming year.

Food/house hunting

The prospect of moving house is always exciting for me. It brings new foodie horizons, new grocery stores, cafes, brunch spots, hidden gems. It's almost exactly two years since we started looking to move to Newington Green, all excited about moving a bit east. We love it here, but we're keen to buy and can't afford the crazy prices around here, so we're looking further east into Hackney. My dream is Lower Clapton, around Chatsworth Road ,and we've been spending more and more time over there, trying out local cafes and shops, cycling the streets and picturing myself living there full time.

Chatsworth Road is an interesting street, higgledy-piggledy Victorian buildings, a mixture of African, Caribbean, Turkish, working class and artsy cafes, shops and take-aways, part run down, part polished up,  views of Canary Wharf at one end and slopes down to the luscious Hackney Marshes at the other. In the Victorian times right through to the mid 90s it held a regular street market, which has been reinvigorated in the last year. I've been a number of times over the past few months, and it promises many delicious eating options - dickensian classics! Japanese street food! Cakes! Artisan cheese and bread!

But the first up I tried out the Moroccan stall outside Epicerie 56, a lovely well-stocked and fairly priced deli. Meat and pastries were sizzling away, and it was a beautiful winter day.



I ordered a chicken bastilla - a thin filo patty, with the most perfumed, aromatic filling you can imagine. Brown chicken meat was mixed with almonds, cinammon, orange blossom and other spices. Just the most exotic and otherworldly taste, but so warm and comforting on a cold day.



We sat on little stools on the street corner and watched families stopping to chat, hipster strumming guitars, kids playing down the side rode. I could definitely live here.

Back on track

With a three month backlog of delicious meals to tell the world about, where does a boy start? An old favourite.

There are some places I'll go back to over and over again, despite a list of restaurants I want to eat at as long as my arm. It usually involves impressing visitors with "look what amazing stuff I have on my doorstep!". My four regulars, depending on the guest, are Mangal in Dalston, Tayyabs in Whitechapel, Ottolenghi in Islington and Tbilisi, the Georgian restaurant in Holloway. Lately, I've taken meat fiend friends to Mangal for smoky Turkish lamb kebabs, amazing piles of fresh and tangy salad and freshly bakes breads. One friend who visited in January insisted we went again when she came back with her boyfriend in April. That's how good it is.

Dalston is a great place to take visitors. You can build up the mystique as you walk over, telling them about its Jekyll and Hyde character: by day a bustling, multicultural hub, all nail bars, dead chickens, fruit and veg, phone cards, religious chanting and popcorn. As night falls it's the hipster mile, sunglasses, big hair, the early 90s junkie look. But the barbecue smoke oozing out of Kingsland High Street/Stoke Newington Road's many ocakbasi restaurants gives it a summer holiday feel and the warehousey, slightly run down buildings gives it a feel of New York's Lower East Side. You take a right down Arcola Street and enter a bustling smoky grillhouse and you're transported into another world.

You pretty much always have to queue in Mangal, watching the chefs man the grills, the heat making everyone sweat but especially them as they knock the flaming coals around and turn the spitting skewers of prime lamb, quail and chicken. But arrive at a sensible time (ie. not 8pm on a Friday or Saturday night) and you'll be ushered to a table before long. The menu is short and sweet, and we nearly always get a mixed mezze (so cheap) to start - it's just humus, a yoghurt dip, baba ganoush and a tomato and bulgur salad but goes down wonderfully.



For mains I almost always go for the adana kebab, which consists of two minced skewers of lamb. Normally people think of mince as a cheap cousin to fully formed meat, a bit limp and flavourless. But not at Mangal, where it is succulent and more juicy, and has bits of chilli, garlic and herb in the mix. I've been known to deviate to the boyfriend's kebab of choice: cop sis, which are smaller, marinaded cubes of lamb. And my other favourite diversion is the iskender, which you can get either in adana or cop sis form, and is on a bed of bread, topped with tomato sauce and yoghurt. It's more of a dish.



I have just booked a relatively last minute holiday to a lovely little hamlet in southern Turkey. It's my first 'adult' villa holiday, and we've got a pool, barbecue, gardens, bikes and everything. I'm looking forward to eating out big time but also recreating some of my favourite Turkish/levantine dishes in situ.