The Lockhart, Seymour Place, Marylebone

Living East-of-Centre you forget just how much the centre of London's gravity has shifted, especially when it comes to entertainment. It's now rare to go to a gig in Camden, to hear about an exciting restaurant in Kensington, or a street food market in Shepherd's Bush. We're not just talking East-East, but North-East and South-East too are the places where things happen.

When it came to choosing a restaurant to celebrate my birthday with my other half, my suggestion of the Lockhart, situated a block back from Marble Arch, was greeted with a frown... “but there are so many good restaurants in Hackney”. But I'd read good things about the Lockhart from some of my favourite food bloggers and critics, and their menu of southern states soul food done fancy, with a good American wine list, was too enticing to pass up.

Greeted into the light, open canteen-like room by denim-clad waiting staff, we got straight into the American vibes with a glass of sweet sparkling wine from upstate New York, served in a cute crystal glass. House bread was rich and dense, and served with whipped butter.

It's only looking back at the photos that I realised just how much we ate. A small portion of chicken oysters were so sweet, juicy inside, and nicely crisped on the outside, then on top of a 'secret sauce', which was like your classic burger sauce but done fancy – loads of depth to the flavour, a brilliant tang that led to every last smear mopped up.



A starter size portion of catfish gumbo could have satisfied many as a main course, with another deep set of flavours, bits of asparagus, and smoky ol' andouille sausage chopped up in it. I've had a fair few gumbo and this was one of the most impressive yet, especially with a liberal shaking of tabasco in it.



We were upsold a tomatillo ("just one?!") – I thought we were getting a special pitch, but then I heard the exact same pitch being given to a nearby diner. It was nice though – often they can be claggy and cloying, but not here: the pork inside was moist and flavoursome, the corn not too heavy.



The starters came quickly, and we ate them slowly to savour each taste. But the food kept on coming. The signature cornbread was one of the highlights, and filled any time that might have existed between starter and main. Oh it was good. Soft but firm, warm from the oven, served in the heavy cast iron dish it was cooked in, and oozing with honey and butter. One for the last supper.



The speed of service was now becoming comical - we still had some starters on the table, the corn bread had only just arrived and the mains started coming out. Wine was still in our glasses and we were being asked what our next glass was to be.

But when the shrimp and grits came out you could start to forgive them: this dish can be so disappointing, with bland, lukewarm grits and sad prawns. Not here. The grits were bursting with flavour – cheddar, parmesan, smoky bacon in abundance, spring onion adding freshness, mushrooms earthiness, and a nice broth keeping it from being too dry. The prawns were meaty and juicy and full of flavour.



The fried chicken was nicely done, crisp and not too oily, but not badass like the honey smothered chicken I had in a soulfood joint in Harlem, or packed with as many interesting flavours as Dante Fried Chicken in Los Angeles. But the collard greens it came with were in a lovely mustardy broth, and the tomatoes in the salad were just so sweet and fresh.

After we'd finished eating we had to ask to move tables. Something I've never done before, but the loud noise of two bankers at the table next to us talking about money quickly went from voyeuristic curio to crushingly awful. How much they'd spent on wine in Mayfair, how much their houses cost, who's getting promoted, and the reality check moment when one of them said - as though talking about barbarians - that the average wage in UK is £35,000 (I was tempted to pipe up and say it's HOUSEHOLD INCOME and it's £26,000!).

Look around and it didn't seem like the crowd you'd expect with such interesting food and drink menus. A group of wealthy late teens were popping out for smokes before and after each course, I overheard people moaning that they didn't fancy anything on the menu, getting sniffy about the lack of French wines on an amazing menu of American wines. It felt like a neighbourhood restaurant that could have been serving a neighbourhood that appreciated it a little more.

This, coupled with the hasty and upselly service, took the sheen off an otherwise delicious and enjoyable evening. I'd still say it's some of the best Southern food I've had in London, the service was still warm and pally, it's a nice spot and actually it's pretty good value when you account for the taste, quality, generous portions and location. Go! But maybe indicate early on that you'd like it paced gently and don't be afraid to be firm on the upselling.

Pivaz, Chatsworth Road, Clapton E5

When I moved from Newington Green to Clapton, I was most worried about not having delicious Turkish food on my doorstep - not of the standard I could get at Mangal, anyway. 

I've found some decent E5 alternatives - my favourite among them is Neden Urfa, a take-away on Southwold Road in Upper Clapton. Sure they do bog standard doner meat and pita, but order their expertly done skewers of cubed lamb, chicken, and minced kebabs. At a fiver a pop for two adana skewers, generous amounts of fresh salad, all wrapped together in freshly rolled and cooked flatbread, Neden Urfa is excellent on all fronts. Sure it's all fluorescent striplights inside, but it can't be beaten on value and taste.

Down Lower Clapton Road, some fairly good new Turkish options have appeared. Dom's Place is a facelift on Dunya, and has had the "full hipster" - lots of washed out timber, exposed industrial pendant lights, Brooklyn lager and sweet potato fries. Hats off to them for embracing the new Clapton crowd, and some of the food is good, but on some of my visits I've found the 'de-constructed' wrap a bit clumsy, and some sides a bit limp.

Further down, Yoruk has opened with a more traditional look and traditional menu - with keenly priced grills and a homely vibe. I've been sad to see it quiet of an evening - undeservedly: it's good, with generous and warm service.

Not so quiet is the new Turkish restaurant that's opened up on Chatsworth Road: Pivaz. Literally at the end of my road, Pivaz's glass front opens up onto the road, where tables spill out onto the wide pavement, and the smell of charring lamb fills the air. It looks so open and welcoming and has been consistently busy from morning to evening since it opened a few weeks ago.

The décor and vibe has embraced l'hipster: again, lots of washed out timber, exposed brick, displays of artfully arranged rusted cogs, and a soundtrack of 2000s indie hits with the volume cranked up. But thankfully that hasn't extended to the menu, which is traditional: cold mezze, hot mezze, grilled meats, fish and veg. Cocktails are on offer, though, distinguishing it from its more old school Dalston counterparts.

The mixed mezze was a very reasonable £7.95, including a yoghurt and broad bean dish with fronds of dill, a delicious cold aubergine and tomato dish, decent little borek, creamy humus and a haloumi salad. Every dish was nice, generously portioned, and with a few flairs.

The grills landed pretty much as soon as our mezze was taken away, and came with a tomato and cucumber salad and some buttery rice. The salad was a little meek compared to the earthy pickles, fiery onions and tangy sumac you'd get in the salads at my favourite Dalston joints.

I ordered adana kebabs – my benchmark for a good Turkish grill. There were two skewers, the seasoning was authentic, but it would have been good to have a beyti (spicy) option there too. My only complaint was that they could have had a bit more of smoky taste from the charcoal, and a bit more charring on the outside. My mum's cop sis (cubes of lamb on the grill) were perfectly seasoned – just salty enough and nicely charred.

It was an enjoyable meal, good service, and clearly very popular already – I bumped into quite a few familiar faces, and was pleased to see a wide range of locals there: not just the monied twenty-thirty-something set. It may not be the gutsiest Turkish food, nor the most innovative, but at just over £20 for huge portion of decent food, a cocktail, and a tip, it's excellent value.

I'll be back, especially with the smells of the charcoals wafting down my road and with their Turkish breakfast menu to try (have you ever had menemen, Turkish scrambled egg with feta and sausage, tomato and pepper? It's the best.), but if I wanted to show off Hackney Turkish restaurants to visiting friends, I'd still take them to Dalston.

Hackney brunch map

When I moved back from Berlin eight years ago, brunching wasn't such a big deal in London. There were pockets of it - a bit of independent cafe culture in Swains Lane in Highgate, Stoke Newington Church Street  - here and there. Maybe they did poached eggs, maybe it was just a fry up.

Fast forward to 2014, and I'm now slap-bang in the middle of the brunching capital of London. A colleague recently asked for brunch tips for Hackney - as I jotted them down into an email I realised we have something of a brunching revolution happening on our doorstep. I decided to start mapping out my favourite brunch spots in the hope that people searching for good brunch options will see what there is out there.

View Top Hackney brunches in a larger map

Since I started this map, the brunch offering has expanded more. Clapton, where I live, and nearby Hackney Central, seem to have seen some of the better options opening. Rita's, Raw Duck, Well Street Kitchen and Verden E5 all do a particularly classy brunch.

If there's anything you think I'm missing, do just leave a comment and I'll check it out and add it.

Well Street Kitchen, Well Street E9, Hackney

It's amazing how areas so close to each other can have such different feels. Lower Clapton, a purposefully planned and laid out neighbourhood, has two big long shopping streets, and neat grids of well-kept Victorian terraces running off them. The area feels orderly and balanced.

A few hundred metres south and you get to Homerton, bounded and intersected by busy roads, largely re-built with estates from different decades following heavy shelling in the second world war, on top of a street plan that started as a series of ancient lanes. Homerton hasn't seen quite the breakneck 'yummification' that Clapton (North), Hackney Wick (East), Victoria Park Village (South) and London Fields (West) have had in recent years - perhaps helped/hindered (depending on your viewpoint) by its less immediate beauty.

Right in the middle of E9 is Well Street, an ancient market street, that's got pretty much everything you could want: an excellent (cheap) fruit and veg shop, kebabs, curries, jerk chicken, laundrette, a brilliant old school (not gentrified) butcher where I buy much of my meat, a big Mediterranean supermarket, old school charity shops and a Tesco Metro (this is where the founder of Tesco opened their first store). By virtue of the surrounding gyratory of rat-running one way streets, Well Street feels like an island oasis where folk can just get on with their business.

More recently a few new businesses have opened on the street. The Gun pub recently re-opened with a minimal facelift and a major overhaul on the drinks list. It's pretty much the perfect pub - the size of a generous London living room, a saloon vibe, with good seats at the bar, and all simple and original fixtures and features but for a Roald Dahl referencing neon sign reading "secret plans and clever tricks".

The other new business of note is Well Street Kitchen, which I visited last week. It's in the ground floor of a cute terraced cottage, and has a nice mini deli at the front, and running through to the back are tightly backed tables like in an old caff, where you can get breakfast, brunch and lunch through the week and over the weekend.



(image borrowed from Well Street Kitchen)

The menu is excellent - going a notch above the standard brunch fare: there's an antipodean flourish, with lots of avocado, chorizo, slow roast tomatoes, feta, as well as compose-your-own cooked breakfasts, artful granolas. There is also a changing menu of specials, demonstrating their commitment to making brunch awesome.

I had avocado and herbed feta on seeded toast with two poached eggs and slow roast tomatoes. It was epic. The seeded toast was better than sourdough with the flavours, with the seeds adding a nice earthiness, feta and avocado are natural bed fellows, and the tomatoes added something rich and sweet.



I also got to try a bit of one of their specials: a sticky, thick gammon steak, modernised with a pineapple salsa, and served with fried egg, topped with watercress, and with a generous portion of perfectly seasoned and textured thick cut fries.



The virgin mary packed a proper punch - very smoky, paprika flavours and a strong chilli hit. A small selection of local craft beers were also on sale, and of course I could have had a proper bloody mary with booze had I wanted.




Well Street Kitchen joins my Hackney brunch map, and on the esteemed but short list of places to get a proper fancy brunch with proper drinks and stuff. While the offer is pretty brunch, lunch and coffee/cake focused for now, they're starting to do the odd supper club or pop up in the evening - and the menus look interesting and the prices fair.

The place was rammed the Saturday morning we were there, and it will be interesting to see if any other new businesses join Well Street Kitchen and The Gun in opening on Well Street. Keep it slow guys, Well Street works nicely as it is.

Verden E5, Clarence Road, Clapton

I've been excited about Verden since I first caught wind of it opening, and I've been excited about writing this blog since I first visited it a few weeks ago. Spoiler alert: Verden blew me away and I hope I persuade you to check it out and be blown away too.

It's hard to believe that just two and a half years ago, none of the pubs in Clapton had gastrofied. Now there are only a couple left that haven't. Back when the Clapton Hart dolled up, this place was boarded up, having been shut down in its previous guise as the Cricketers after intervention by Hackney Council.

Verden is the most 'grown up' of Clapton's new bars. Inspired by the wine bars of Copenhagen, one of the key people behind it is a former Maitre'd at Scotts in Mayfair, and its offering is based around the trinity of exceptional wines, cheeses and charcuterie. This isn't about showing off drinking champagne. These are people who are deadly serious about wines, cheeses and sliced meat and have gone to the bother of finding the best to share with us punters.

The decor matches the grown-upness. No shabby chic nothing here. It's all crisp, clean lines; black, white, grey and some gorgeous wood. Big windows draw in all the light upstairs on a sunny day, and the basement's deep grey walls, low ceilings and pendant lights make for a futuristic, Scandi revision of the speakeasy.

I've been to Verden twice since it opened: for an evening and for brunch. Our evening at Verden was special - making our way through the meat and cheese and wine menus. We were there for almost four hours, drinking and grazing at our own pace, before sharing a couple of main courses and three desserts between the four of us.



One of their most understated achievements is balancing a meticulous and expert sourcing of wines, cheeses and meats without any kind of sniffy pretension or assumption that diners know their way around these worlds (and judgement if they don't). The menus have lots of well priced options on (glasses of wine start at £3.50, as do cheeses and meats), and short descriptions tell you everything you need to know, so you're not ordering in the dark. I've been to bars with a similar premise which are a lot more intimidating - and that's to seasoned diners like me.

There is a short menu of daily dishes available - for when the wine you've drunk hasn't quite been soaked up by the cheese and meat you've nibbled on. Actually, that's unfair - the food is excellent, with delicious salads (we might have had the tomato one twice it was so good), and typically at least a meat, a fish and a vegetarian dish, as well as some desserts.

We had a crispy confit duck leg with perfect lentils and a charred lettuce. It was a classic done well, and the duck generously sized too. My friends shared a weighty green salad with delicious curded cheese.



The desserts were perhaps the most impressive. We loved the savarin brillat cheesecake with apricots - the cheese making the cake so much more pungent and punchy, offset beautifully with the sticky apricots. A brilliant night.bread and butter pudding with rich vanilla ice cream was warming and satisfying.





Back for brunch a fortnight later, the quality was that notch above the standard Hackney brunch (which is already quite high). The bloody mary was great, with a delicious cornichon and caperberry adorning it. Not too boozy that it'll bring last night back to you, but enough to help you ride it out.



The brunch menu builds on the well-sourced meat they stock for their boards, with exceptional morcilla sausages, iberico, bacon and smoked ham. I went for their rendition of the classic ham, egg and chips, which consisted of two massive slices of amazing ham, perfectly fried egg, and the dreamiest, richest roast potatoes you can imagine, glistening with crystals of salt and thick with the good oils they were cooked in.



The iberico hash with salsa was excellent too, as was the morcilla, bacon and egg.





It was nice to see the space in the full light of day, and Ed Wyand's hostelry makes it a very relaxing, welcoming spot to have a leisurely brunch with friends.

Verden is the gift that keeps giving - all the cheese, meat and wine is available to buy from their cold store downstairs, and you get 10% off on presentation of your receipt. I know I'll be back many times over the coming years to stock up on killer cheeses (the 28 month aged comte in particular), and to bring friends to show off what a perfect establishment we are lucky enough to have on our Clapton doorstep.

Reflections on Bonneville scandal, Clapton, Hackney

It's not every day that a pub on your local high street becomes part of a #twitterstorm. ICYMI: Bonneville, the subject of my last post, seriously misjudged their response to when a stabbing victim came into their pub, and then misjudged a subsequent apology too. But it went viral, in a flurry of right-on outrage, hipster-hate, capitalism-hate, and Hackney-hate.

The twitter outrage grew quickly, and also dissipated quickly. By about 6pm the volume of tweets had notably died down, and a couple of days later a crowd of less than a dozen staged a peaceful protest outside. There was more sincerity in Bonneville's apology by then, and like most twitterstorms it's unlikely to leave much of a long tail - its been getting busier in the evenings as I've cycled past.

What it has surfaced, though, is the extent of quiet, ongoing frustration that many in Hackney feel about the pace and face of change and the extent that it benefits a range of Hackney residents, new and old. That quiet frustration is increased every time a new business opens and people realise it's not for them: whether £475 pairs of dungarees, £35 bottles of wine, or pieces of cake priced just shy of £4.

The trajectory is unlikely to change. The word is out that Clapton is 'trendy', so shop landlords will jack up the rents at every opportunity. Long-standing businesses whose leases come up for renewal could well see their rent tripling from what they were paying already. The only businesses that can thrive on a high rent will have to have a hefty margin on products or have lots of lower margin products and shift them quickly.

Put bluntly: Hackney's many working class residents do not have much disposable cash. If high margin products seem unjustifiable on a low income (unless you're talking payday loans, then you're talking desperation), then you need to sell lots of lower margin products to attract a wide cross-section of people, and pretty much the only businesses that can do that are supermarkets and high turnover fast food restaurants.

You could well find that the people who get angry about gentrification and Hackney's new fancy, exclusive establishments overlap with the people who get angry about chains and fast food joints opening. Those don't have to be intellectually incoherent positions - but it shows the tension in supporting small, independent businesses to keep money local and support innovation, which at the same time drive up house prices, residential and retail rents, and narrow the pool of businesses that can serve a broad reflection of the local area.

As with many thorny issues, the answer is more complex and probably doesn't involve finger-pointing and there probably are no silver bullets.

But we need to start by acknowledging that prices (houses, residential rents, commercial rents, of beer and meals outs) are driven by supply and demand. Unless the price of everything is regulated (capitalism is having a shaky moment, but we're not quite there yet), you'd want there to be as many pubs, shops, houses, private rents as possible - taking the heat off commercial and residential rents, and making it more feasible for businesses to serve wider demographics. That would mean protecting retail space from being converted to residential, creating more retail space, and also building more affordable and intermediately priced homes.

It also means we all need to get behind businesses that started pre-gentrification, serve a wide range of people, but could be flattened by a post-gentrification rent rise. Give them your custom, and you could help make them more viable into the future.

Yard Sale Pizza, Lower Clapton Road, Hackney

In the aftermath of the Bonneville scandal, gentrification and the exclusivity of new Clapton businesses are the talk of the town. There have been few new businesses which really serve a wide range of Clapton residents - often because the kind of businesses that can function on high rents are those selling few high margin products, or lots of middle-low margin products .

So I've been asking myself: what kind of products*could* appeal to old and new, lower and higher income, and stack up financially? Well, erm, pizza.

Pizza is one of just a few high margin, quick shifting products that has a mass appeal (I'd also include good Turkish kebabs). Who doesn't love pizza? And who can be bothered to make pizza at home? I imagine the likes of Domino's or Pizza Express have some of the broadest customer bases in the country.

There's been an explosion of pizza joints in Clapton. In the last couple of years Sodo, Venerdi, Latto Pizza, the Princess of Wales pub and now Yard Sale have joined old timers like Il Guscio, Pizza Man, Vesuvio and the Pembury Tavern in serving up pizza. And they're pretty much all busy.

Yard Sale, in a savvy move, offered 50 free pizzas a day for 6 days over their launch week, getting the word out around the neighbourhood. Queues were snaking down Lower Clapton Road before doors opened on the Friday of launch week, as Claptonites of all walks of life queued for free pizza. It was nice move that hopefully broke down the invisible barriers that many new businesses unwittingly put up - with on-trend fit-outs translating subconsciously (and through experience) to some as "not one for people like me". I hope the front-loaded generosity got the word out beyond twitter.



Their offer is simple: two sizes, five regular pizzas, a few well chosen sides, extras and drinks, delivered or for pick up. The toppings are all good quality, and combinations well-balanced.

The meat feast is their take on the classic pepperoni and has pepperoni, a spicy salami, and - sausage of the moment - nduja.  The full house is epic and nodding to those all out American style pizzas crumpling under the weight of their toppings - all mushrooms, ground beef, onions, olives and pepperoni. We had both, and were impressed by the discernible quality of the toppings, the chewiness of the base - which is thicker and keeps its texture better than a thin crust if you're transporting it.





We also had the TSB, yes, tender stem broccoli, which was our favourite of the three. Generously portioned with TSB (bloody hell) and then pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and then shavings of manchego, it was another perfect, fresh combination.



Alongside the five regular combinations there are sometime specials - a pulled pork, apple sauce and crackling pizza was on the menu, as was an intricate, not-for-delivery option of tuna, anchovy and caper paste. Both sound amazing.

So, Yard Sale has clearly upped the pizza stakes in Clapton. Sodo, the only real competitor, is more classic and understated than some of the more American flares here. And Sodo is more restaurant, whereas Yard Sale is more geared up for take away and delivery.

Will Yard Sale be one of the few new Clapton businesses that can appeal to a wider demographic whilst also affording the hefty rents? The prices (£7.50 - £11 for a 12" pizza) are in line with those of Pizza Express, cheaper than Domino's, but a good bit more expensive than my old favourite Pizza Man down the road (where you do see all walks of Clapton life, and especially those who like a good ol' greasy pizza).

With their early efforts to engage a wider slice of Clapton they may be in better stead than most new E5 businesses. The shop is welcoming and unpretentious, and the informal set up may make it more appealing than many others.

Only time will tell, but after the storm around the Bonneville, it's even more important for all new Clapton businesses to make a genuine effort to welcome everyone.