Le Merlin, Lower Clapton Road

At the end of February I wrote about the closure of a couple of gentrified Clapton restaurants and suggested a couple more might close. And sure enough, they did. The lovely Jackdaw Jazz Cafe shut its doors in April, the wine-cum-furniture shop (yeah...) Residence looks like it's shut, Senegalese cafe and music bar Little Baobab shut in April (from a spot which has also seen Riley's and Candela shut...), and a few more have their leases up for sale even though they're still trading.

But as one story ends another begins. A couple of interesting new business have opened on Lower Clapton Road, and there are rumours of a couple more big openings in the works. One of the more low key new restaurants is Le Merlin - a creperie.

It's not the first creperie in Clapton, but it's head and shoulders above the other one. This is the real deal. Authentic savoury galettes and sweet crepes, Breton cidre, craft beers and a small selection of wines. And Orangina, naturelment. The menu is broad but stays true to classic French flavours. Every dish sounds delicious - from simple classics like the complete, to more lavish combinations like scallop and leeks.

We try the complete (with added mushrooms). It's superb. The galette is tangy and crisp in all the right places, expertly folded. The gruyere has a good pungency to it, and the mushrooms are herby and full of fungal mustiness - a world away from the bland button mushrooms you might get elsewhere. The ham is good quality and the egg perfectly runny.



We also try a more unusual combination: goats cheese, bacon, caramelised pear and maple syrup. It works a treat. I'm a sucker for sweet and savoury hits (swavery), and this has it all with some contrast between the crispiness of the bacon, the soft saltiness of the goats cheese and the soft, rich sweetness of the pear. This is pure heaven.



The sweet crepes are worth saving some space for (I purposefully create space with a 40 mile cycle ride in the morning) - again, the menu has a decent selection derived from classic ingredients. There's chantilly cream, chocolate sauce, nutella, grand marnier and plenty of salted butter caramel sauce. There's no question for me: it's the caramelised apple with salted butter caramel and cinnamon - another rich, sweet and sticky combination of flavours. My other half recommends the melted chocolate and chantilly cream crepe.





The food is excellent, and it's matched by a convivial atmosphere. The staff are friendly, the kitchen is open with countertop dining around it, the decor is understatedly stylish - a deep industrial green, a soft cream and light woods. It's family-friendly, but doesn't feel like a giant playroom.



More importantly it's affordable - galettes start at £5.70, sweet crepes from £2.60. Yes, I know it's "just" batter and some filling, but the batter's great and the filling's great and it's just nice. I recommend it. It was busy on the Saturday lunchtime we were there, but slightly quieter in the evening. Not for long I suspect - I'm going to be here often.

P Franco, Lower Clapton Road, E5

The first post-gentrification closures are starting to roll in. Maeve's Kitchen up by Clapton Pond closed it's doors over Christmas, and The Plough on Homerton High Street - one of my favourite bars in the area (but clearly not frequented enough) - shut its doors at the end of January. I suspect a few more may decide to shut up shop over the coming months, if trade doesn't quite pick up.

Despite the climate, Lower Clapton Road's perpetually steamed up wine shop and bar P Franco has recently started doing food, and it's heaving - even on a cold Sunday evening. There's good reason: a man called William Gleave, a Tasmanian export, who ran an acclaimed restaurant in Hobart. He took up residence at P Franco in November, cooking a short menu from a tiny kitchen attached to the big communal table in the middle of the shop.

I had seen the menus pop up on my feeds for months and seen very alluring snippets and snaps on Twitter, but a succession of belt-tightening months had me dialling down my eating out for a while.

The wait is worth it. My discerning friend and I are naming it the best meal we've had in ages mouthfulls into the first dish that's brought out: raw chopped beef (soz, 'crudo'), with crispy shards of dried seaweed (like nori), crumbed anchovy, rocket and mayo-like emulsion, and powdered seaweed. It's cool, creamy, firm, crispy, leafy - a gorgeous mixture of temperatures and textures, borrowing from Japanese and Italian flavours and ingredients.

Next up is a "risotto" without the rice - it's all toasty seeds, pine nuts, orzo pasta, and two types of wheat in a thick, luscious nettle sauce, topped with crispy kale and tiny shards of broccoli, topped with parmesan. There's an egg yolk buried in the risotto, and we're encouraged to pierce it and blend it into the sauce. This is a stunning looker - all rich, emerald green - but it's a proper taster too. It's the most extravagant vegetarian dish I've had without any of the usual buttery, creamy cliches of extravagance. 

A chicken broth with cuttlefish comes out next. The cuttlefish is cut so thinly it's almost like rice noodles, ghostly floating in the rich, fully flavoured broth, topped with just-blanched squares of greens, and then generous glugs of rich, fruity Le Coste olive oil. It's simple, fresh, under-stated.

We climax and conclude with the pasta dish. There's always a pasta dish on the menu, and I've recently spied a food blogger call this some of the best pasta in London. Uhuh, yup. The pasta is rough cut, wide sheets - somewhere between papperdele and lasagne, with a good bite to it. The sauce is a simple tomato sauce, topped with basil and generous parmesan, and the quality of the ingredients just sing. My highlight is a creamy curd cheese, like that in the middle of treasured burata. It's utterly luscious, and nicely chilly against the warm, fruity, acidity of the tomato sauce. It's made by Gleave every day, and I'm already making plans to make my own...if only I could find some buffalo milk.

There's a great selection of wine, as you'd expect from a wine shop. The pricing is simple - just add £10 to any bottle on the shelves, which are chiefly from small producers, often natural/organic/biodynamic, and most supplied by esteemed suppliers Tutto. They have a couple of red and a couple of white open for pouring by the glass, which suits us as a way to try a few interesting glasses between us over the course of the evening. 

We get the impression that most people here are pretty serious about their wine, many in a professional context - perhaps working in other East London restaurants. It feels the slightest bit sceney, and sometimes it's not clear who's working and who's a guest. But there's a welcome for everyone, and the food prices are exceptional value for the quality - ranging from £8 - £10. While there isn't a wine list, the wines are very clearly priced on the shelf, with bottle prices from £9 (before the £10 corkage), which compares favourably with house wines at other local restaurants.

By the end of the meal we're sure it's the best we've had in ages. So simple, so concise, so on the mark. I'm already formulating plans to take various friends here for a relaxed evening of wine and inventive dishes brought out in gently paced succession. Don't delay, this is the real deal.

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.

Uchi Hackney, Clarence Road, Clapton

I've not been blown away by many of the new openings in Clapton recently. Some seem to shove their 'concept' down your throat a bit too much, showing off the chefiness and forgetting that there are only so many people who won't baulk at pretentious, try hard menus. Anyway. I'm not here to rant; I'm here to sing the praises of Uchi, which is one of the better new openings in Clapton this year.

Uchi specialises in sushi and sits neatly on the same road as Tonkotsu, which specialises in ramen, and Sho Foo Doh at Pacific Social Club, which specialises in okonomiyaki - Japanese pancakes. Three specialist Japanese restaurants on a road where four years ago the riots blazed.

Uchi's opening has been gradual and tantalising. It started with them launching a bicycle sushi delivery service. They deliver anywhere in the Hackney borough (to the envy of my friends just outside the borough boundaries), and it's a pretty neat thing having getting nice sushi delivered on a bike. For delivery you can order from a selection of white rice sushi, sashimi and nigri and black rice vegetarian sushi options.

The restaurant itself opened in early September, and was worth the wait. They've done it out beautifully in a low key, but high quality Japanese style. It's all white and bright, with lovely bleached, untreated floorboards (my friend says to me "wait til customers start spilling soy sauce on it", low tables and bars that run along the walls, all with low wooden stools. There is a nice bar, with Japanese spirits behind it, nice little brass-plated ceiling lights, and all the staff are wearing denim aprons. 

It's pretty busy on the cold Saturday night we visit, and the crowd seems chiefly locals. People swing by over the course of the evening to pick up sushi orders, and I spy the manager dash onto his bicycle at least three times to do deliveries - the delivery cyclist has called in sick that evening.

The menu is simple, with all emphasis on the sushi and snacky sides. There is a short selection of black rice vegetarian sushi rolls and white rice meat and fish rolls, as well as nigiri and sashimi. The take away/delivery menu has a slightly wider selection than the restaurant menu, but you can order any favourites from the delivery menu if you can remember them.

I rate the sushi as good by London standards. It's not the snazziest or the most manicured - this isn't about obscure, expensive fish, but well-made, hand-rolled goodies with a few flourishes here and there. We enjoy a roll of soft shell crab, which is fried in tempura, and rolled up with avocado, spring onion and maybe some mayonnaise.



We order a salmon and avocado roll off the delivery menu. It's not the inside out roll I loved when I first had a delivery, way back in May, but the salmon is fresh and the classic combination doesn't tire.



We also order haloumi, sweet potato and carrot black rice sushi, which is a lovely combination of nutty, crunchy and sweetly salty.



A black seaweed salad with lightly pickled carrots and thins of deep fried tofu is full of interesting umami tastes, and a surprisingly crunchy texture.



The warm dishes include skewers of pork belly, chicken and miso aubergine, and a few fried dishes - kara-age chicken, gyoza and tempura vegetables. The karaage chicken is succulent and juicy, with good flavour. Its coating is crisp and not claggy, and we polish up every last bit. The tempura veg, too, are nicely done, and includes king oyster mushrooms, sweet potato, aubergine, peppers.



The prices are just fair for the quality and quantity. This is no bargain night out, but neither is it taking the biscuit compared to other mid-range Japanese restaurants.

A few creases still need ironing out - the frying happens too close to the restaurant (can leave you a bit greasy), service could be a little more attentive (drink re-ups, clearing empties), a dish is forgotten from the order.

But this is decent sushi in a part of town where you don't find much of it, at a time when Japanese food is having a bit of a moment. With a decent offer to pescetarians, carnivores, vegetarians, vegans and gluten intolerants, I suspect Uchi will do quite well serving Hackney. I'm already thinking about my next delivery!

Jackdaw jazz cafe, Lower Clapton Road, Hackney

New openings are trickling through in Clapton, not quite as fast as in 2013 or 2014, but still steadily. The new openings are a mixed bag, with some really blowing me away (like the wonderful Brooksby's Walk) and others leaving me cold as they try too hard to impress with fussy menus, excruciating 'concepts' and food that fails to live up to its descriptions. I won't name them because I'm here, chiefly, to sing about what's great.

Jackdaw, a new jazz cafe opposite Clapton Pond is one worth singing about. Enough to get me out of my rut of not blogging (mostly driven by all my eating out cash going into a renovation project, but that's another story). Yup, a jazz cafe. A proper jazz cafe with live music every night. The jazz is downstairs in the basement bar, but the live sounds travel up to the restaurant and bar upstairs, where 22 year old head chef Joshua Dallaway and his equally fresh-faced team will serve you up an exciting, unusual but incredibly competent menu of sharing plates.

It sounds like it shouldn't work, like it's all ...'concept'. But it does, and that's chiefly down to the warmth and passion of the owners, Angela and Ash, who live in Walthamstow, love love love jazz music, and have decided to follow their dream at the end of their careers and open a jazz cafe. Rumour has it that Angela spotted Joshua Dallaway on a telly programme, liked what he was about and got in touch to see if he'd be interested in heading up the kitchen at Jackdaw. 

Josh and the team's creativity with food is impressive. Every dish is full of interesting flavours, textures, with fresh, seasonal ingredients that are cooked to perfection and beautifully presented. Read the descriptions and you think it won't work or that it's trying too hard, but the love for experimenting with ingredients and flavours is palpable. The menu changes every week, and you get the feeling they spend most of their downtime experimenting with different combinations for the next week's menu.

The menu is divided into snacks, small plates and desserts (except Saturdays when a £35 tasting menu is also on offer). The small plates range in price from £6 - £10, but they're really not that small at all. On our visit two £8 and two £10 dishes was just right for two hungry cyclists. 

Pumpkin gnocchi with wild mushrooms was "the best gnocchi I've had" - perfectly formed little pillows, with a nutty, fruity taste. The wild mushrooms were bountiful - king oysters, girolles, chanterelles, pickled little Asian mushrooms in sesame oil and a sharp vinegar. A few leaves of sea aster gave a lovely salty freshness to the dish.

Cauliflower came several ways (pickled, roasted, raw, pink, white, etc) with jasmine tea soaked raisins and a creamy barley and parsley root risotto-cum-porridge topped with cacao nibs. It was a strange mix of flavours, with the raisins and the nibs and the creamy sauce evoking a wintery breakfast porridge, while also being very savoury, nutty and earthy. 

Shorthorn onglet steak was absolutely perfectly cooked and seasoned, and served with a soft stilton cheese, roast baby turnip, roast salsify and blanched turnip tops. The presentation was stunning, the portion generous for the price, and every mouthful was layered with salty, earthy, fresh flavours with heaps of beefy juice to soak up.

Our final (not so) small plate was lamb belly with grilled hispi cabbage, mint sauce and hay baked shallot. The lamb belly had a lovely thin crisp layer of fat and the meat underneath was pink, juicy and meltingly tender. The shallots were luxuriously rich, the on-trend grilled hispi was perfectly sweet and smoky, and the mint sauce paid a nice homage to the kind you'd get in a Toby's Carvery with your all you-can-eat roast lamb. This was probably our favourite savoury dish.

Desserts are also a treat, and vary up every week. You get the feeling that Josh and the team have just as much - if not more - fun dreaming these up, testing and experimenting. We order both (we really don't need to). One was a chocolate mousse, with a wild mushroom ganache, whipped buttermilk and walnut marzipan - the funghi ganache was like a more pungent, earthy white chocolate. It really shouldn't work, but it does - contrasting nicely with the tangy buttermilk and the richer mousse. The other dessert was a fancy take on a carrot cake - with candied carrot, sour cream ice cream, a sweet, moist and sticky maple cake and candied pecans. This dish alone was definitely enough for two.

We end up in Jackdaw for three hours on this chilly Thursday night, enjoying the music, the just-right pacing of the service, with the fruity Sicilian nero d'avola wine keeping us going. A steady stream of customers came in for dinner, all local. I suspect Jackdaw will do well on return custom, as people see how great value it is for the quality of cooking - and the fact you get the live jazz coming up from downstairs too. They're open all through the day for coffee, breakfast, lunch and snacks. It doesn't reek of hipster, and the owners are very keen to encourage people from all backgrounds to come in for the jazz. Let's hope they manage it, because Jackdaw is a real treat to have in the neighbourhood. 

Affordable Marseille and Cassis restaurant tips

To bouillabaise or to not bouillabaise, that is the question. Or was certainly my question when planning a trip to Marseille and Cassis. Bouillabaise is a 'must do' according to many blogs and guidebooks - the signature dish of the area. But boy is it pricey - a bouillabaise ceremony starts at about 45Eur, high in price because of the rare fish that need to go in, only found in this part of the Mediterranean.

After consulting our Marseille guru, British-born but Marseille-based restaurant and architecture critic Jonathan Meades (well, we googled his views on it), we decided to skip the tourist traps and see what good things were on offer. 

Le Souk

High on our list was North African food, and we followed a Jonathan Meades tip to Le Souk on the Old Port. In any other city you'd expect there to be little to recommend in such a prominent spot, but Marseille is wonderfully low key like that - no sign of droves of tourists in our late June trip. The menu has all sorts of mezze and grills, but this place is all about the tagines and cous cous. We ordered a delicious mixed mezze platter, but it did too good a job at filling us up before our generous mains.

I went for a sweet'n'sour tagine (pure savoury is also an option): duck with figs, prunes, honey and onion. IT came with two confit duck legs, and the thickest, sweetest, richest sauce you can imagine. The figs and prunes gave it a real intensity, and only pungent meat like duck and lamb feature on the sweet/sour menu because anything else would get lost amongs the flavours. Toasted almonds cut a crunchy, earthy taste through it, contrasting nicely with sprinklings of icing sugar. The cous cous itself was fluffy with a crunch and a lovely plain vessel for this intense dish.

I also tried a classic cous cous stew - which was served in all its component parts - chicken, cous cous, a light and watery broth, with stewed vegetables, soaked sweet raisins and chick peas. It was simpler and lighter and every item sung for itself. Mains cost from 12€ to 18€.

Le Souk Marseille, 98 Quai du Port, 13002 Marseille, +33 4 91 91 29 29.

Café des Epices

'Neo bistro' is your search term if you're looking for something a bit more modish and cheffy, and when the Euro's as affordable as it is in Summer 2015 you can get some pretty good value in Marseille. I agonised over which neo bistro to try on our trip, but settled for Cafe des Epices, just a block back from the Old Port. The tables are spread over a large square, surrounded by massive potted olive trees. It felt a little less in-the-know than other spots, with a few guidebooks on the tables and a few bigger parties. Our table was at 8pm, and the place was deserted when we arrived, but every table was full by 9, which is worth noting for reservations.

The forumle is set at 45€, includes some delicious bread and olive oil, and a selection fo 4-5 dishes at each course. I had major food envy of my partner's gazpacho-like dish - the most perfect, zingy, cool tomato base laced with top drawer olive oil, with confit tomatoes, stunningly good smoked mozzarella, olives and a parmesan crisp.

My sea bass tartare was fresh and cut with an Asian inspired sesame dressing. It was good, but I wish I'd had the gazpacho.

Not to worry - I won on the mains, with an exceptional lamb and aubergine dish. There was so much lamb, it was basted with a moreish, anchovy, herby sauce. It came with quinoa, which was lifted a couple of levels above with rich sun dried tomatoes, caperberries.

Desserts were nice but not especially memorably, but the main drag was the struggle to get service - we were forgotten about after an intense service start. We were compensated with a large glass of the rose we were drinking, but by the end of the meal we'd probably had enough and would rather have had a little bit docked off the bill. Alas, language barriers!

Café des Epices, 4 Rue du Lacydon, 13002 Marseille, France, +33 4 91 91 22 69.

La Boite à Sardine

Our favourite find was the lunch-only, reservations-necessary fish and seafood restaurant on a busy junction not too far from the station. La Boite à Sardine is one of those places you just want to rave from the rooftops about - definitely locals only (telephone only reservations and limited openings help), but the whole thing is just so bloody convivial and conducive to a happy meal. 

The chefs rotate daily on days off from other restaurants, the menu changes up daily with a few consistent numbers - such as deep fried sea anemone and platters of sparklingly fresh prawns with their *unbelievable* aioli, and are introduced to you personally by the knowledgeable waiting staff.

Wine is served in the Disney glasses that mustard comes in and are staples in every French family home, the mark ups are reasonable, and there are some fine wines available at 500ml for your moderately sensible weekday lunch.

As well as the sea anemone and prawns, I devoured a bowl of sweet little clams in a herbalicious sauce, made all the more delicious by the generous scatterings of aniseedy chervil. It came with chick pea chips - shaped like good chunky chip shop chips, but paying a nutty, earthy compliment to the clams. 

To end we shared clafoutis, which was served from a tray, family style, and got hoovered up too quickly to get a photo.

La Boite à Sardine, 2 Boulevard de la Libération, 13001 Marseille, +33 4 91 50 95 95.

Le Bonaparte, Cassis
Cassis is the fanciest seaside village in this part of the South of France. We stayed for three nights, as a base for exploring the wild Calanques national park for stunning beaches and walks. Cassis itself is very pretty and relatively small, but it's jam packed with restaurants bars and shops. It's a proper place to see and be seen, with lots of promenading down the front, and every table in every seafront bar is occupied.

Prices are relatively high in the restaurants and quality is variable. Some are targeted at once-and-never-again tourists, others at monied locals. But find your way down some of the back streets and there are some classic little neighbourhood restaurants that have a loyal following of return customers. Le Bonaparte is one such place, tucked down a side street, with tables spilling out into the little alley. All the tables outside were fully booked on our evening there, so we took a table inside.

There are menus at different prices depending on how fancy you want your mains. The 26€ menu's options worked fine for us, so we both started with fish soup - the real deal, with bread, a garlicky saffron rouille and grated emmental. It was rustic and simple, a big pan of the stuff, which was really just an excuse to have lots of rouille and cheese topped baguette rounds and dip them in the soup.



The 26€ menu afforded the most perfectly cooked and prepared sea bass - crisply grilled, then filleted by the waiter and presented off the bone, lightly seasoned and drizzled with olive oil. It was sheer, delicate perfection. And it came with ratatouille (the best ever) and roasted new potatoes; simple, homely, perfectly cooked.



Le Bonaparte had an excellent wine list, with a good selection of wines from the immediate Cassis area (great for whites, rose and red!), and the staff were very good at recommending one to our taste. Drop by earlier in the day if you plan to go - reservations recommended for a good table.

Le Bonaparte, 14 rue Gén Bonaparte, 13260 Cassis. +33 4 42 01 80 84.