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.

Street food down South

I've lived in London for almost ten years now, and all of that has been north of the river. South London was always been a bit inconvenient - never hated or frowned upon, just further away and harder to get to. Lots has changed since then - better north-south connections with the Overground, the second advent of the bicycle, and of course, the pull factors of good foodie stuff happening south of the river.

I've tried out Honest Burger in Brixton Market, I've stocked up on Persian goodies from the wonderful Persepolis in Peckham, and more recently I've been checking out their street food markets in Brockley and at Maltby Street.

I went to Brockley Market in the middle of our prolonged winter. It isn't in Brockley proper - more on the fringes of Lewisham and Deptford, in a car park next to Lewisham Way. It drew in all the hip kids from across SE London - lots of late 20s/early 30s couples with beards and small dogs, trendy families, groups of students. I thought I was in Hackney for a second.

It was barely even noon before I was in the queue for Mother Flipper - famed for it's delicious burgers. They cooked it from scratch, but before long it was ready. I went for a double candy burger - you don't cycle all the way from Hackney for just one patty! - and it was one of the best I've eaten in London. Really juicy, pinkish meat, with candied bacon, perfect brioche bun, great condiments.



We also stopped off at the Fish Dogs stall, where fresh, warm doughnuts, or Dog Nuts) were being fried up (in separate oil, importantly) alongside fish sandwiches. Sadly our savoury compartments were full (their fish sandwiches are becoming legendary), but we did have enough space for the doughnuts. They were shaped like mini churros, coated in cinnamon sugar and served with a salted  caramel nutty dip.



Absolutely perfect. I love a good cinnamon coating on doughnuts - it reminds me of holidays in Spain or Portugal and getting sweet fried goods from roadside vans.

A few weeks ago we finally made it down to Maltby Street, which is at the Borough/London Bridge end of Bermondsey. It's a fascinating area: sleepy, residential with lots of council estates and new build blocks, but urban and very central - Maltby Street takes place in railway arches. Nearby Bermondsey Street is going through (or coming out of ) a very high end process of gentrification, with lots of foodie destination restaurants and Zandra Rhodes' fashion and textile museum. Maltby Street feels very much part of that, and the vibe was power-professionals having weekend downtime.

Our first stop was St John's Bakery, which is one of the best known units there. Enormous loafs of sourdough of more varieties than you could ever imagine are sold, alongside their legendary custard doughnuts. That's what we went for. The custard filling comes in plain vanilla, chocolate and lemon. I went for the classic vanilla. The doughnuts are light, fluffy and perfectly formed, but the real treat is the custard inside - it's very light and airy, with visible vanilla seeds inside. I tried so hard to make it last more than a few dozen metres, but failed miserably. It was worth the trip alone.



We started with doughnuts because I'd heard scare stories about them selling out. There were still a fair few left at midday, but don't chance it.

Our next call was Monty's Deli for their famous reuben sandwich. The queue was long, but this is generally a good sign when it comes to street food. It turns out the queue was disproportionately long because one of their hot plates wasn't working, so they were at half capacity. And you don't rush good food (luckily there were some samples of their chicken liver pate to nibble on - so luscious).



The fillings were piled high between the two slices of rye - pastrami (home made, really juicy, lots of proper fatty bits), sauerkraut, thinly sliced 'swiss', mustard, sauerkraut and russian dressing. We sat on a wall just outside the market area, and guzzled our sandwiches in silence, with intermittent happy groans. It really was excellent; a really great combination of salty and tangy and fiery and wholesome. 100% soul food.



At both Brockley and Maltby Street markets had a lot of really great looking stalls. I went for the greatest hits first time around, but will be back to try out the other stalls. Both have a good range of produce in addition to street food, so worth going for a top up on 'nice things' too.

A new-ish Jew-ish deli

I went to Katz's deli in New York many moons ago. My trusty guidebook informed me the sandwiches featured in 'that moment' in the film When Harry Met Sally, a film I hadn't seen. Tucking into the thick stuffed pastrami sandwich, it didn't take long to figure out what 'that moment' entailed. Pastrami wasn't something I'd given much thought to before that moment, but after that I've been looking for preserved meat hits to satisfy my cravings.

Mishkins, the newish opening in Covent Garden from Russell Norman of Sputino/Polpo etc fame, really hit the mark with it's pastrami. Wow. It describes itself as a "kind of Jewish deli" and the décor is believable, and the vibe isn't as scene-y and showy as its Soho stable mates. The menu is classic Jewish comfort food - combined with sour gin cocktails, perfect for the drab weather we've been having.

I'd been snacking heavily at work (poor form) so we had to do comfort food-lite. We kicked off by sharing a plate of latkes (grated potato pancake), smoked trout, thinly sliced tangy beetroot and fiery horseradish cream. An absolutely perfect combination of flavours - what more can you say? The beetroot was a great texture, slightly chewy and I can't get enough of smoked trout.



For mains we both shared the Reuben sandwich and mac'n'cheese. Mac'n'cheese is one of those dishes I'm generally not inclined to eat out; it's a dish I can do quite well myself and there's something silly about paying £9 for pasta and white sauce. But it was worth it - totally buttery, not too cheesy (no heaps of dyed orange mild cheddar) but rich, and a lovely crispy, crumbly topping. We were circling our fingers round the skillet soaking up every last bit of juice.



And the Reuben, it was really excellent. Juicy juicy pastrami (my dining partner texted a week later saying she was still thinking about it), thickly sliced and generously stuffed between two pieces of lightly toasted rye bread, topped with swiss chesse and a layer of sauerkraut-y Russian dressing. Again, the flavours worked perfectly together.

The cocktails were great - short and strong. Mine, a Negroni, lovely and bitter with all the Campari. Our dessert, a warm cookie and ice cream was unremarkable, but nice.



Overall, it's a thumbs up from me. I'll be back, mostly to eat endless Reuben sandwiches, and to explore more of their menu (Hello lamb and pistachio meatballs!). And more gin cocktails.