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.

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.

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.

Esters, Stoke Newington

Stoke Newington was at the vanguard of the second wave of middle class bohemianism in Hackney. Back when London was a bit more grey and staid, when people still went out in the West End, and when the Overground was called the Silverlink and was disgusting and unreliable, Stoke Newington was an enclave of farmers' markets, Mediterranean cafes, vegetarian Indian restaurants, and slightly smug earthy types who knew about life beyond the tube.

When I lived over in Tufnell Park, we'd take the 393 bus up to Church Street to snaffle a table for brunch at Blue Legume, grinning at our luck as twee indie types would gather round tables, waiting to pounce as soon as people put down their tip. In those dark days, the quiet bohemianism of N16 was a breath of fresh air for those of us who had a taste for the brunching life - mine developed while living in Berlin.

But Church Street developed in a funny kind of way. Loads of cafes and restaurants opened, but few of them exceptional or even half decent. High rents pushed margins to the max, and so high margin products such as pizza, low grade cakes and coffee are sold at premium price to endless willing punters keen to embrace the cutesy cafe culture of Church Street. It's a timely reminder of what happens when word catches on, landlords realise what rents they can charge, and businessfolk open restaurants because they can, not because they love.

So I was very pleased to check out Esters, located amidst a sleepy warren of N16 backstreets, and discover top notch, top value coffee, cakes and seasonal food - and love.

Esters took over from Fred and Fran, which was a similarly anomalously excellent cafe, and has kept much of the light, spacious interior intact, but with some nice rustic tables, hanging pendants with brightly coloured wires, and a nice line in plants.

The menu changes regularly with the seasons, and has an eclectic mix of influences - from a Levantine labneh to Caribbean jerk chicken, all pressed between proper bread and good British produce.

We enjoyed roast rhubarb on sourdough cardamom french toast - a revelatory take on the classic of plain ol' white bread. The rhubarb was delicate and fragrant, and worked beautifully with pistachios and labneh, for a bit of pungency.



My jerk chicken sandwich was also delicious. More sourdough, stuffed with aromatic, spicy chicken, hot and dripping with its cooking sauce. Also stuffed in this mammoth sandwich was a coconut, fennel and lime slaw, giving a crunchy, fresh counterbalance to the chicken. At £8 it's not cheap - but it was gigantic and bloody tasty - and enough to power me on for an afternoon of traipsing around in the cold.



The menu features some more open sandwiches (my friend had a butternut squash caponata and minted creme fraiche beauty), some tasty sounding baked and poached egg dishes, and some spectacular looking cakes and tray bakes, which unfortunately we had no space for.



Esters is a refreshing break from the bland Church Street norms, with chummy service, high quality innovative food at reasonable prices. Once you've been here you won't be back at any of those derivative cafes serving up dishwater coffee for £2.40.

Brunchin' brunchin' #2

Brunch is big business in the yummy liberal enclave of Stoke Newington. So much so, that in a damning critique of the inner city middle classes's hypocrisy, the Independent journo highlighted the almond croissant and latte serving cafes of N16 as the frontline of social divisions that permeate right down to parents at the school gate.

Competition is fierce for brunch on Stoke Newington Church Street. Fierce for restaurants and cafes vying for the refined dollars of N16ers, happy to splash out on the good things in life. Fierce for would-be brunchers, with every table in every eatery hard won through hawking and stalking and opportunist pouncing. The sharp elbowed middle-classes indeed.

My old favourite is the Blue Legume, which does delicious brunch, lunch and dinner. Their brunch menu covers tansatlantic favourites such as eggs benedict, freshly pressed fruit juice combos (celery, apple and mint? YES PLEASE!) with more Mediterranean style dishes - olives, lamb sausage, haloumi all crop up in the cooked breakfast dishes. The prices are very reasonable and so the above-mentioned competition for a good table is tough. We recently even found ourselves brunching at the unfashionable hour of 10am to save us the table sourcing stress. On a bitterly cold, but sunny December morning it did the trick, but by 10.30am people were arriving in droves and by 11am the outlook was pretty bleak. So there you go: early bird, worm, etc.

I usually opt for the eggs benedict, which is always delicious, but most recently I plumped for the Mediterranean breakfast, the big 'un.



It was a delicious mixture of smoky, salty and fresh flavours; much less greasy than its English counterpart. The jam for the toast felt slightly redundant, but I guess some people like to finish on a sweet note. Ben had the fruit salad platter, which is an immense spread of exotic and more local fruit, presented beautifully and great for kidding yourself that it'll help you fighting off a cold.

The opening of Homa on Church Street midway through 2010 sent the N16 twiteratti into a gushing frenzy. A new spot, with beautiful, sleek interiors, a wine bar with a bang on winelist, excellent pizzas, bunch, cakes, locally smoked salmon. Is it too good to be true?!

We had a table late afternoon on Halloween. The surrounding streets looked like the scenes in ET, full of gleeful, screaming children dressed in immaculate scary outfits. The distractions of Halloween and our slightly odd timing made for a quiet and relaxed meal at Homa, with friendly service and tasty food.

Keen to try the N16 smoked salmon, I plumped for the Eggs Benedict. James was super keen and went for a plate full of smoked salmon with capers, cornichons, rocket and lashings of creme friache. Fancy pants. The salmon was really incredible - delicate smoky flavours, tender and very fresh tasting. In the eggs benedict it was served with fresh spinach, poached egg and hollandaise sauce, all of which tasted like they were made from really top ingredients.



Anna opted for a cooked breakfast of sorts, with scrambled eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, mozzarella and sourdough toast. Again, the ingredients were clearly super quality and well sourced, and it totally elevates brunch from being a fun social event with nice food to a proper foodie experience.



Meals at Homa are a good £2 or so more expensive than at Blue Legume and the experience is a little more slick, stylish and sedate. The ingredients at Homa are clearly a cut above the rest, but Blue Legume is still very yummy and has a lively atmosphere and more 'fun' menu in terms of smoothies, cakes, etc. Brunch is clearly a growth industry in Stoke Newington and you're truly spoiled for choice. Lucky me.