Berber & Q, Shuk Shuk, The Good Egg, Black Axe Mangal - new Middle Eastern restaurants in Hackney

Middle Eastern food had its big moment in British culture about a decade ago when Ottolenghi hit the scene and brought his generous, zingy, lavish Levantine food to the masses in his London cafe-restaurant-delis and through his eponymous debutcookbook. Soon you could buy tahini, za'atar, sumac and proper bunches of fresh herbs everywhere, and our larders all got a bit more interesting.

In that time we've seen handy little chains like Yalla Yalla and Comptoir Libanaise popularise mezze, and the Lebanese restaurants of Edgware Road and the Mangal grills of Green Lanes and Dalston have continued to do their delicious thing. The spirit of Ottolenghi has made it into people's cooking repertoire and into the salad counter in many cafes, but only a handful of restaurants – such as Fitzrovia's Honey & Co – have continued to really push and innovate within the Levantine range to bring exciting Middle East inspired cuisine to restaurant tables.

That was until 2015. A new generation of Middle Eastern restaurants have sprung up across London. North East London, and Hackney in particular, is home to a number of them. Best among them are Haggerston's Berber & Q, Shuk Shuk BBQ in Hackney Wick, Highbury's Black Axe Mangal and Stoke Newington's The Good Egg. Read on and find out why.

Berber & Q
Berber & Q was the first of the bunch to open, in a big space under the arches in Haggerston. Loud house music pumps out, it's dark and buzzy with a clubby vibe. For restaurants are the new clubs, as Hackney gets a bit more old and moneyed. The menu comprises meats and mezze with a heavy emphasis on grilling and smoking on the barbe-Q. Q-ueue you will also have to do, as it's terribly popular. Rock up at 7 and they'll probably call you an hour later to tell your table is ready.

But it's all worth it. The barbecued cauliflower 'shwarma' (the most 2015 of dishes) with pomegranate and tahini was the best I've had, and all the vegetarian mezze was swimming in wow factor: the beetroot came with whipped feta, orange and hazelnuts, smoked aubergine with browned butter and pine nuts, a whole smoked garlic head, home made pickles, green beans with garlic and preserved lemon.

The barbecued meat selection was excellent. We had a portion of their homemade merguez sausages, some 'hand pulled' lamb mechoui – essentially an authentic and delicious version of doner meat, and a sticky, rich slab of pork belly cooked in a pomegranate barbecue sauce. It's all served with fresh herbs, grilled vegetables, flat breads and home-made garlic and chilli sauces. All of this is topped off with a great cocktail menu that makes the most of Middle Eastern flavours – think pistachio syrups, sumac, rose harissa in the Bloody Mary, saffron infused rum.

Shuk Shuk BBQ

Shuk Shuk BBQ in Hackney Wick was opened as a collaboration between the local craft brewery Crate and Berber & Q, and is so very Hackney Wick: street food kitchen, kombucha bar and craft beer bar in a two floor renovated warehouse with ping pong tables, sofas and 'mess hall' (i.e. communal) style tables. The menu has much of the same meats as Berber & Q HQ (I opt again for the lamb mechoui, but try their smoky pulled chicken this time).

The sides here are more of a fusion between US and Middle Eastern BBQ – potato salad is infused with saffron in a nod simultaneously to Iran and the Deep South, the slaw has tahini, yoghurt and fresh herbs through it, and the mac'n'cheese is made with Balkan kashikaval cheese, with a herby crumb running through it, and lovely crunchy bits on top. The sides and topping really made it – help yourself to zhoug – a herby, garlicky green sauce, their sweet and spicy BBQ sauce, or the ultra garlicky garlic and yoghurt sauce You also get lightly pickled onions, pickled chilli peppers, rocket and fresh herbs, harissa, and a cumin salt to sprinkle over it.

Black Axe Mangal

Fusion is also on the table at BlackAxe Mangal at Highbury Corner, but here it's taking the Turkish/Kurdish mangal grill as a starting point, mixing in influences from Head Chef Lee Tiernan's days at nose-to-tail trailbalzers St Johns, mixed in with Asian influences, spice mixes from (my absolute favourite fun fusion restaurant) Mission ChineseFood in San Francisco.

The menu is short with a small selection of flat breads, interesting sides, and larger main dishes. We have the lamb offal flat bread, which is their spin on lahmacun. The offal is only lightly pungent but fully flavoured, and it's topped with lightly pickled pink onions, parsley, garlic and chilli sauces. My offally sceptical friend is initially hesitant, but the chewy dough and perfect balance of flavours means we have more competition than we bargained for.

We could take or leave the kale with preserved lemon, but the century egg with cod roe and crispy pig ear is one of the most remarkable dishes I've tried. It conjures up the taste of egg mayonnaise with bacon and cress, but with rich, deep umami flavours from the core ingredients. A charred hispi cabbage with fermented shrimps is buttery, smoky and so so savoury.

The two main meat dishes are nods to mangal classics - the Bakken special is a ludicrously delicious lamb chop with a tomato and pepper sauce, crunchy lentils, yoghurt and chilli. But the only choice for me was the Mission Chinese spiced lamb doner - a zingy, asian-y spiced mixture coating and dusting the offaly lamb, served on a flatbread with lettuce and cucumber, topped with a yoghurty sauce and crispy onion. 

Like Berber & Q and Shuk Shuk BBQ, Black Axe Mangal puts the party into Middle Eastern food, with fun cocktails (love a Lagerita) and a heavy metal soundtrack. 

The Good Egg

The Good Egg is a bit more sedate and traditional in its presentation, and mashes international Jewish and middle eastern influences with nods to Montreal and New York at the same time as Jerusalem, Iraq and Eastern Europe. It's from an ex Ottolenghi team and located on Stoke Newington Church Street, opening after much anticipation to queues of people hungry for brunch.

They bake their own bagels and challa, which are the most delicious I've had, served with nice olive oil and a za'atar mix. They also cure their own beef for pastrami, which I had in their Good Egg Burger (plenty of bone marrow in the patty for extra pungency, and it comes topped with an egg and pickles and served with zoo fries, which have lots of yemenite herb chilli zhoug on top) and is also available on platters, as a big short rib in its own right, or on pastrami chilli cheese fries. Yum.





Like with the other new middle eastern restaurants to open in North East London, the Good Egg is good for sharing, with lots of smaller dishes for the table. We ate burned aubergine with zhoug (again!), beetroot with sour cream, dill and poppy seed, a whole roast cauliflower with tahini and pomegranate (as I said, the most 2015 dish, and a fine version of it) and buttermilk fried chicken with za'atar and a chilli honey dip (greaseless crispy coating, juicy inside).





Brunch is supposed to be a big deal, with lots of inspired egg options - a shakshuka, burned aubergine in pita, pastrami meat hash, challa french toast, pastrami hash. I intend to try it out in the new year.

KERB comes to Hackney Wick

I haven't made enough noise about street food recently. In some ways, street food is becoming a ubiquitous cliché, like pulled pork or craft beer. A blanket term to tick boxes and bring in the punters. Street food could be any old crap served hot from a stall. Pulled pork could be anything from expertly brined, seasoned and smoked rare breed pork, to abattoir floor scrapings doused in sugary BBQ sauce. Craft beer just needs to say craft beer on the pump and people will buy it.

As with anything in London, research and recommendations are needed to cut-through the multifarious options. It's not about being a snob - your same £6.50 could get you a very average burrito or a very good one. Why wouldn't you want the best, if you could? When it comes to street food in London, KERB does the filtering for you with their - dare I say - *curating* of street food traders operating at their markets.

KERB have the pick of the crop on their roster, running regular street food markets in London - they have markets catering to lunching workers at Granary Square (Kings Cross, Tues - Fri), Wednesdays at Spitalfields, Thursdays at the Gherkin, and once a month at UCL.

It's a model which is beginning to emulate Off the Grid in San Francisco, which operates at a much larger scale in a much smaller city (but where street food carts are much more culturally engrained), where literally dozens of sites are run by OTG, with anything between 2 and 10 street food carts there for lunch or dinner, all listed and mapped on their site.

One of the highlights of OTG are their big evening markets where you can spend an evening trying out street food and getting good beer at decent prices - the market at Fort Mason has 32 trucks every Friday night through the warm months. Like London, the scene quietens down through the colder months.

The exciting news for us East London dwellers is that KERB have secured a permanent home in Hackney Wick. Opening in December, KERB will be running street food markets from a big warehouse INDOORS, and hopefully all year round - what with it opening in December and being indoors and all.



Hackney Wick is the perfect location - it's off the beaten track enough that it'll hopefully shake off some of the annoying types you get at the pricey Street Feast in more accessible Dalston. This probably does mark the next stage in the Wick's development and commercialisation, though, which I'm sure many Wickster hipster creatives will mourn.

But I'm pumped, especially living 5 minutes cycle away in Clapton. To whet you're appetite for what you might be able to expect, I'll run through some of my favourites that I guzzle at my once-weekly KERB KX lunch trip.

Kimchinary

Kimchinary is my first street food love, and I've written in depth about Hanna Soderland's expert fusion of Mexican and Korean flavours with her kickass burritos and tacos. The flavours and colours will blow your mind, especially that bulgogi ox cheek burrito with the kimchi fired rice and Asian slaw. Wow.

Spit and Roast

Spit and Roast do fried chicken that makes me weep with joy. Buttermilk brined (natch), its coating has a lovely balance of spice and the perfect crisp. And it's served with a sticky, sweet korean sauce and slaw in a brioche bun. I know this reads like a list of cliches, but each one is Grade A refinement. They sometimes do rotisserie in their van, and their chips are very good.

BBQ Lab

Pulled pork klaxon!!111!!! But this is what I'm talking about with the difference in quality at the same price. These guys know how to do 'technique'. They deploy sous-vide to cook meat to perfection over days and days, with the most melt-in-your-mouth results. But it doesn't stop at the delicately smoked meat - different pickle and topping combinations all the time. The 'lab' in the name gives the game away - they're always experimenting and the results are pretty consistently delicious. Blow torching cheese on top of pickled apple on top of the 53 hour pulled pork just about blew my mind.

Mother Flipper

I first tried these guys down at Brockley Market, and they're one of a number of excellent burger purveyors on the KERB roster (I love Bleecker Burger - soon to open a restaurant in Spitalfields, and Tongue and Cheek's are offaly good), but for me the simplicity of the MF candied bacon and cheese hits the spot every time. Their house sauce and pickles are classic, and the demi-brioche buns just perfect.

Yum Bun

I have a major weakness for steamed buns, but especially when they come filled with an aromatic pork belly and hoisin sauce. It's a rich treat, but given a real freshness by spring onions and cucumber. Yum Bun do these steamed buns with a range of fillings - I recently enjoyed their panko crumbed fish bun, lathered with gochujang spiked mayo. And at Kerb KX they do a good value lunch box, with two buns, two vegetable gyoza and a zingy Asian slaw for £7.

The tastiest.pizza.ever

Would you believe me if I said the tastiest pizza in London was...within (literal) spitting distance of the Olympic Park? Or surrounded by desolate streets and light industrial warehouses? And the nearest shop is probably Screwfix?

Tastiest pizza in London is a bold claim. So, a caveat: tastiest, not most authentic.

So where? At the Crate Brewery in Hackney Wick. At the edge of all things. I have an emerging theory that the best places in London are the places which are hardest to reach. That's where the vibe is the most laid back, away from the hustle and bustle of back-to-back diaries enabled by rapid mass-transport systems.

Crate Brewery is at a quiet bit of the Lea Valley, right by the water - only a few joggers or walkers go past on the other side, and you've entered from the other side through a maze of industrial streets and then a car park. The perimeter of the Olympic park is right there - complete with at least nine security cameras that we could see.

Picture the scene: it's a sunny September evening, a mixture of families, older singles and young arty types are set on communal picnic benches by the canal. Lots of interesting, deep colours of beer from their onsite microbrewery are being brought out, every now and then a couple of big pizzas are artfully presented, wafting delicious smells through the air.

Between us we ordered three pizzas - but I basically had a whole one to myself. And it was the tastiest pizza I've had in London. It was topped with griddled courgette, red onion, feta cheese and gremolata. The base was great - thin, but not too crispy, robust enough to hold the dense topping. The flavour combination on the topping was king - the courgette, red onion and feta are natural partners, but the inclusion of the gremolata was what really elevated the pizza - so fresh and zesty and complementing the other ingredients perfectly.



Our other pizzas included a Margherita - simple, but done well with a smattering of halved cherry tomatoes on top, and a more exciting one topped with thinly sliced potato, truffle oil and sage. It was another great combination - much subtler, but absolutely luxurious.





I've barely even mentioned the beer, which is another big selling point about Crate Brewery. As the name suggests, there is an onsite microbrewery, making a range of ales and lagers, which were smooth and delicious. A decent selection of other interesting ales and lagers were on tap, and a yet wider selection were in bottles.

Crate Brewery is all in all a great find for a laid back beer and pizza, away from the madding crowd. For those not in the East, I'd say it's worth the journey. Otherwise, get on your bike and get stuck in.