Strut & Cluck sounds like it might be one of those places where disappointing slabs of buttermilk coated fried chicken (always buttermilk) are served in an ironic basket.
In fact, the meat on the table at this Spitalfields venture is turkey – and almost a whole menu full of it.
But rather than doing Christmas dinner 24/7 all year round, Strut & Cluck aims to showcase the potential of this bird by pairing it with Middle Eastern-cum-Mediterranean elements: from harissa and tahini to fiery Pul Biber peppers.
General Manager Kelly Willett told me the owners, husband and wife Amir and Limor Chen, went all out to get their ideas across to her on what Strut & Cluck should be – even whisking her to Tel Aviv to meet some of the suppliers, as well as scoping out the dining scene for inspiration.
The resulting dining area evokes an unpretentious Mediterranean terrace, albeit one with a great big long bar at the front.
Macramé features on the walls without feeling chintzy, and the furniture is mismatched, but in a way that says ‘eclectic’ rather than ‘something went seriously wrong here.’
To start, I went with Ms Willett‘s recommendation and had the cauliflower, served in either a quarter, half or whole, and dressed with crème fraiche and pomegranate molasses. I was told that this dish is popular with their weekday regulars: what’ll keep them coming back is the sumptuous flavour combination of citrus and cauliflower, to which I am a huge recent convert.
In this case, the citrus is of various types (predominantly lemon zest) and added to the crème fraiche, with more zing coming from the quintessentially Middle Eastern, concentrated flavour of the molasses. The leaves, extra charred from the cooking process, are a particular standout.
Alongside the starter I tried an Israeli beer, Maccabi, which had the pleasantly malty, extra thirst-quenching quality that seems to suit warmer climes so well. At this point, Strut & Cluck was beginning to feel so comfortably holiday-esque that, naturally, I began to worry. Surely an outlook this sunny on a chilly October evening is begging for a disappointment of some kind? And after all, this is turkey – which doesn’t really have a consistently positive reputation (fancy a twizzler?)
I needn’t have worried – the ‘classic slow-roast thigh’ was very fine indeed. Served with a liberal jug of buttery gravy, the turkey has amazing depth of flavour underneath its delectably crisp, spiced skin. The slow-roasting promotes turkey’s natural qualities – its arid fibrousness and gamey taste – and strengths, with the meat swaddling your tongue in warming tastes.
The chunks of sweet potato and caramelised red onions are a smooth treat, and the barberries puncture the pure comfort with a welcome sourness. The dish could have used something with a firmer edge for an extra twist texturally – one of the sides (from pitas to salads) or something from the “roasted and tossed” selection, may work well for this purpose. But it’s more than enough to satisfy and enjoy on its own, especially with the cold winter nights drawing in.
Strut & Cluck’s website makes a significant amount of bones about turkey as a medical marvel – talk of amino acids, zinc and tryptophan abounds. This is all fair enough of course, but their turkey-based menu delivers more of a tangible, delicious reward than that – and if you get a chance to gobble at it, take it.
Taken to Basque: A waiter prepares some of the excellent steak at new Shoreditch restaurant Sagardi
Some restaurant groups grow organically, opening branches that preserve the intimacy and quirkiness of their flagship and by extension the signature of the chef who made it famous. Ottolenghi or the international Momofuku spring to mind.
Sagardi on Curtain Road is not one of those restaurants. It is the first UK outpost of a global chain of which Basque restaurants are only one of many well-oiled components.
When we walk up, a smartly-dressed woman is by the front door, handing out Sagardi cards to passersby, reminiscent of the curry house frontmen on Brick Lane.
She ushers us in, past the long pintxos bar to our right and white-tiled butchery counter to our left, to the 100 plus cover restaurant where we are seated under a huge decorative boat suspended from the ceiling. The waiters all wear wireless headsets, like they are gamers, or in the secret service.
Sagardi makes a big deal of its steak, which is fair, because the steak is very good.
It also makes a point of its produce, flown in daily from Spain, presumably to emphasise the authenticity of its regional cuisine. The paradox of the much-vaunted ‘seasonal menu’ is that if you are not concerned with geography, it is always summer somewhere.
The heirloom tomatoes, which come drizzled in olive oil and a few slices of chilli, certainly taste of sunshine, but personally I would prefer something from Kent.
Our favourite small dish is the morcilla, rich Spanish black pudding served with roasted peppers that provide a sweet punch that cuts through the earthy sausage.
The steamed clams in green sauce come with its sauce thickened with starch, and I find it too heavy. But the tuna tartare is fine. To reiterate, the steak really is excellent: buttery and tender, grilled on a wood fire, sliced up and served rare.
The side of lettuce with spring onions, however, is priced at eight quid. There’s a lot you can do with a simple green salad, but this was just iceberg lettuce topped with spring onions – we could find nothing obvious to justify the hefty price tag.
While the earpieces remind me of the time I went to the Las Vegas Rainforest Café, Sagardi shares none of the former’s ruthless efficiency. Service is friendly but a little confused and drops off as the evening wears on.
I ask our server for a wine recommendation and she tells us a sommelier is on his way. The sommelier never appears but we are at least brought some pleasant, average white wine. Judging by the extensive wine list, and wine cellar that runs the length of the restaurant, this is not all Sagardi has to offer, but it is bustling and hard to get anyone’s attention. We have some non-descript desserts and head home.
I ask my dining companion what he thought of the place. “Very Shoreditch,” he responds. What that means is open to interpretation, but if you are looking for somewhere spacious, impersonal and expensive to dine then Sagardi is the perfect fit.
The bar at Jidori. Photograph: Mary Gaudin, Design: Giles Reid Architects
Jidori had been piquing my interest ever since it first opened. Walking by on Kingsland Road, I couldn’t discern the cuisine, but the warm, soft lighting beckoned, and through the glass pane I could see the tables were full, with pairs of casual diners chatting at the wooden bar, the whole dining space framed by blue-grey walls lined with crockery and plants. The cuisine is contemporary Japanese, and when I finally walked in for dinner, TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ started playing whilst I was served a Yuzu lemon slushy margarita. All my pleasure centres lit up at once, as if an algorithm somewhere was running to ensure maximum appeal to a broad, urban 30-something demographic.
In fact, the responsible parties are Brett Redman and Natalie Lee-Joe, restauranteurs and co-founders. Redman has opened several popular places in London, of which I’ve only been to the Pavilion café in Victoria Park, a very different type of venue but again, one that knows its market very well. Whereas the Pavilion serves free-range breakfasts and craft beer, the vision for Jidori is yakitori – a casual type of Japanese cuisine centred on chicken skewers, cooked on a charcoal grill and washed down with copious amounts of booze. Although there are nice vegetarian highlights, I wouldn’t recommend eating at Jidori if chicken isn’t your thing.
The tsukune, with cured egg yolk. Photograph: Aaron Tilley
The menu is quite small and we had most of it, starting with the katsu curry Scotch egg, which, in the final reckoning, was a well-executed Scotch egg, but a Scotch egg nonetheless, so not exactly a rarity in Hackney. I then had a simple bowl of chicken broth. Broth well done is lovely and understated. This had depth and flavour and was as clear as glass, indicating the stock was simmered slowly and never came to the boil. Next, the omakase, a tasting platter for two, which for £18 each allowed us sample most of the skewer menu. Chicken thigh and spring onion; aubergine and miso butter; chicken hearts and bacon; king oyster mushroom; and tsukune: minced chicken on skewer (think the consistency of kofte), dipped in raw egg yolk. The mushroom, hearts, and tsukune stood above the rest. The set menu included rice and pickles. It was supposed to also include an onsen egg, but this never materialised. We finished off with the ginger ice cream with miso caramel, which is a serious dessert and unmissable.
Jidori is certainly not the only, or the most authentic, yakitori in London – perennial favourite Jin Kichi in Hampstead comes to mind – but it is inviting and cheerful, with attentive service. It is also good value – even with drinks you can eat there for less than £20 a head. With this winning formula, there may well be more restaurants to come from Redman and Lee-Joe.
Jidori 89 Kingsland High St, London E8 2PB jidori.co.uk
Ujima Bakehouse in Nakuru selling healthy sourdough. Photograph: Ben Mackinnon
A bakery in Hackney has joined forces with a Kenyan charity to promote the health benefits of sourdough bread.
E5 Bakehouse, situated in a railway arch beneath London Fields station, is helping the Ujima Foundation in Kenya’s Nakuru region to provide training and employment for local orphans and to raise money for eye operations.
Ben Mackinnon, who founded the bakery, said: “About three years ago we had a call from someone wanting to do a training class with us. They were hoping to start a not-for-profit bakery in Kenya.”
That trainee was a doctor called Madeleine Bastawrous, who, along with her husband Andrew, set up Ujima after they spotted rising rates of diabetes in Nakuru, which is a four-hour drive from the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
Diabetes can cause blindness, and as a consequence there is a growing demand for eye operations in the area.
The couple decided that selling bread would be a great way to support the local community by funding eye operations and providing employment. And they wanted the bread to be healthy.
Mr Mackinnon said: “Madeleine got back in touch and asked if we could bring some bakery skills and training to take the project even further. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity so I immediately said ‘Yes’.”
Not long after that, he made his first trip to Nakuru.
“I spent a couple of weeks running a training course and preaching the benefits of sourdough. Bread was never a part of the indigenous diet in Kenya, but now that it is, the bread they eat is full of oil, sugar, salt and processed flour.
“With sourdough, the flour is fully fermented and there are no additives, so it is much more digestible and nutritious,” he said.
E5 Bakehouse in London Fields runs courses for aspiring bakers. Photograph: Ben Mackinnon
All the breads at E5 Bakehouse are sourdoughs, and the hope is that replicating the model in Nakuru will help improve the local diet.
The Ujima Bakehouse is up and running, but the project doesn’t stop there, and Mr Mackinnon already has the next step planned.
He said: “The ambition now is to take a team from London to Kenya to help set up a café.
“The bakery is in an absolutely beautiful location, but it is quite a long and bumpy road into town, so it is not the sort of place you can just pop to for a loaf.
“Andrew and Madeleine have set up a new workspace in town, so we want to go out there and help start a café selling cakes and croissants as well as sourdough from the bakehouse.
“The burgeoning middle class and the community of expats means there is a growing market out there, and all profits go into training new bakers and helping to treat people with eye problems.
“For every 100 loaves sold, one person has their eyesight restored.”
Tucked in at the end of Commercial Street – just before it opens out onto Aldgate East station and the surrounding chaos – you’ll find Chuck Burger, plainly fronted with a black sign and solitary neon light.
The place is outfitted with no-nonsense tables, industrial metal fittings and paper menus, a bugbear for some but one that’s never really concerned me at laid-back fast-food restaurants. If you’ve ever visited a Meat Liquor restaurant, think that kind of mess-hall layout, but more laid back and without quite so much nightclub lighting.
Add a smidgen of Yankification as well, which stretches to its drink selection – resplendent with American and American-inspired beer offerings including the white-collar hipster’s choice Pabst Blue Ribbon, along with cocktails and ‘hard’ milkshakes with added rum.
Aiming to get into the American spirit, I decided to start with the diner staple that is the Oreo milkshake. However my sense of place was swiftly rerouted back to East London once I noted that said shake came in a jam-jar, as most things do when you’re that close to Shoreditch. Nonetheless it totally hit the straw-clogging spot, and I was ready for real food.
I was surprised, when I asked my ultra-friendly waiter for a recommendation, that the first thing that came out of his mouth was “the wings”, rather than anything beefy. He explained that they are first smoked, and then fried to finish, with a faraway bliss in his eye that suggested this was a Very Good Thing. Obediently, I ordered the buffalo wings, which come in sets of six or 12 for £5.50/£9 (as do the the Korean hot wings.)
They arrive slathered in sauce that delivers an unexpectedly huge piquancy (and almost lung-searing acridity if you breathe it in too closely.)
However the effectiveness of the cooking techniques, and therefore the moistness of the meat hidden away under the sauce and skin, ensures that the flavour of the chicken is not lost – a minor miracle.
It’s a similar story with the burger. The meat, at the centre of it all, speaks for itself – it tastes clean, fresh and with a perfect medium-rare texture. As Chuck prepare their own patties, they can even legally take it down all the way to rare – a treat for punters still gnashing their teeth about the pernicious effects of ‘elf and safety on the redness of their beef.
The additions, which consist of red onion, pickle, American cheese and Chuck relish (which includes Sriracha, seemingly a house favourite) in the cheeseburger, are nice but nothing out of the ordinary – think Burger King if they upped their patty game. I find myself wishing I’d plumped for a more adventurous item: perhaps the halloumi stack, or the Thai inspired pork ‘Same Same’ burger. The burgers range from £6.50 to £8.
If I were to pinpoint a disappointment, it would be that the onion rings, listed on the menu as “pickled onion rings”, had no discernable difference in taste from the usual, and in fact were a little too thin and overwhelmed with batter. The fries, McDonalds-esque in their slimline saltiness, or the sweet potato fries, are potentially better options side-wise.
However, for those hoping to knock back a few beers and some meat in a comfortable setting, Chuck Burger can barely be quibbled with – they certainly get the ‘meat’ bit 100% right.
You can see the red, green and white of Italy’s national colours in the pizza made with tomato, basil and mozzarella, named after Queen Margherita, who was captivated by it on a visit to Naples in 1889. She and her husband King Umberto were there on a charm offensive, to consolidate the newly acquired unity of the country, little knowing that this humble street food would go on to captivate the rest of the world, becoming a symbol of Italy.
The red of the tomato is perhaps the defining colour of Italian cuisine today. It was also the colour of the shirts of Garibaldi’s army, which helped achieve that unity, a reminder of his comrades recruited from the slaughterhouses of the Argentinian beef industry, where they wore protective garments that mitigated the horrors of the job.
It’s hard to imagine the food of Italy without tomatoes, but in the centuries of fine cooking that preceded their arrival, after the discovery of the New World in the late fifteenth century, Italian gastronomy was famous throughout Europe. So what did tomatoes have to add? Precious little according to some, who like Elizabeth David, poured scorn on the red tide of crude colour and all-pervasive flavour that has in many ways coarsened this subtle cuisine. Ingredients that can speak for themselves are often drowned in a flood of over-assertive tomato, that comes cheaply, as a paste or purée, tinned pulp or whole fruit (yes, botanically speaking it’s a fruit not a vegetable), or sun-dried.
What do we get from tomatoes that can’t be got elsewhere? A sharp sweet fruitiness, which in the past used to come from a squeeze of unripe grapes (verjuice), gooseberries, pomegranate juice, lemon or bitter orange juice, dry white wine, or a bitter, acidic herb like sorrel, and an additional oomph from umami, sometimes called the fifth taste (more on that in next month’s Citizen), which properly used tomatoes can give us, more as flavour enhancer than bulky ingredient. So let’s go for the fruitiness, and keep tomatoes for what they do best, bringing out other flavours rather than drowning them.
We like to think of sweet old grannies in sprigged aprons lovingly preparing homemade bottled tomatoes and purée, and there are a lot of them about, but in reality commercial tomato products are a major industry, a huge chunk of Italy’s economy, as David Gentilcore tells in his gripping Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy, and a huge factor in the cooking of other nations too.
A pasta recipe, All’Amatriciana, is a delicious combination of tomato and other flavours. It’s based on ‘cinque P’, five P’s: pasta, pancetta, pomodoro, pecorino and peperoncino. A tasty version involves serving the pasta, spaghetti in this case, with a sauce made by frying some pancetta cut into small pieces until crisp in a very little olive oil, you put these aside and cook some garlic in the oil and fat until golden, than add a little dried chilli to taste (I use Chinese Facing Heaven chillies, taking care not to burn them which would make them bitter), then chucking in some chopped fresh tomato, not too much, and quickly cooking it down. Serve this on your cooked and strained pasta, with some grated pecorino or parmesan, and the crisp bacon pieces.
What makes this dish for me is the home-cured bacon of Meat N16 in Stoke Newington Church Street which I use instead of pancetta. It’s made from some of their free-range pork, nice and fatty, salted for only few days, then lightly smoked.
And the tomato needs to be tasty too; it’s worth paying a bit more for a heritage/heirloom tomato, rather than the watery, insipid little supermarket beauties, bred for appearance and shelf life rather than flavour. If you look up commercial tomato sites on the web, there are awesome statistics covering every aspect of the mass production of this nice little earner except flavour, whereas on the Isle of Wight site every other word is flavour, with poetic images of pleasingly irregular multi-coloured specimens.
Hackney citizens are fortunate in being able to get these and other organic tomatoes in its many farmers’ markets and whole food stores. They are so good to eat that all you need is salt and a generous splosh of olive oil (don’t ever try to ‘drizzle’ the stuff, a meteorological misnomer if ever there was one); then if you add some chopped garlic and a few basil leaves you have Italian patriotism on a plate and a nice lunch, along with a bit of cheese and some bread, for less than a quid, whereas a cheap pizza, made with inferior ingredients, would set you back many times more.
If you want to experience Italian pasta without tomatoes try the now trendy carbonara, using this time not bacon but guanciale, cured but not smoked pork cheek, which gives up lots of gently flavoured fat in which you toss the cooked and drained spaghetti together with one beaten egg per person, and generous amounts of parmesan. The trick, as some of our best recipe writers have told us (especially in the Guardian), is to reserve a cup of the well-salted cooking water from the pasta and add it in small amounts as you rapidly stir in the egg, so that the sauce goes all creamy, and doesn’t curdle. With all that bacon fat the one thing you don’t need is cream as well. This is a subtle dish, where the pasta is not overcome by the sauce, and you get to enjoy its taste and texture, as well as the smooth coating.
Way back in the 1460s Maestro Martino, cook to popes and cardinals in Rome, made his Chicken with verjuice (see Hackney Citizen, September 2013) using sour grapes to get a nice fruity tang to some chicken joints fried with chopped bacon and finished with a sprinkling of fresh herbs. If you substitute tomato for the grapes you get Pollo alla Cacciatora, which in spite of the pundits I see as fried chicken, with the addition of chopped bacon and vegetables, including tomatoes to give that sweet fruitiness we mentioned, and a splash of wine tossed in at the end, and reduced quickly to a concentrated dry braise, not a stew.
The magic combination of tomatoes and bread lurks in fond memories of the soggy tomato sandwiches of childhood picnics, which should have been horrible but were blissful. There is something about the way moistened stale bread (if it is good bread to start off with) combines with tasty tomatoes and a few basic seasonings like salt, oil and vinegar, to create a new taste sensation. The pundits don’t say why or how this happens. Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, the Science and Lore of the Kitchen explains most of the physics and chemistry of food, but not this. It looks as if a very happy relationship between the enzymes that make stale bread a good vehicle for liquid things (somehow it doesn’t get soggy) and those that give ripe tomatoes their tastiness, creates a magical mixture of textures and flavours that can be found in panzanella, a salad based on tomatoes and stale bread, (see Hackney Citizen, August 2014) and the Spanish pan con tomates.
Here the simplest possible combination of ingredients creates one of the best and most basic items of Hackney’s many tapas bars; that at Escocesa in Stoke Newington Church Street is lovely. The good bread keeps its bite, while the garlic rubbed into it when toasted, combines with the fresh tomato, salt and plentiful olive oil, left to rest a few minutes, to give a savoury mouthful that is both soft and crunchy at the same time. Gazpacho is an extension of this; chopped tomato, garlic, and whatever stuff comes to hand (onion, cucumber …), together with grated stale bread, seasoned with salt and augmented with good olive oil, somehow creates a mixture that is more than the sum of its parts. It can be whizzed up in a blender, or pounded by hand in a pestle and mortar to get a rougher texture, and of course the seasonings are up to you, but it is those mysterious enzymes that do the trick.
Grilled crispy pancetta, with trimmings. Photograph: Victoria Seabrook
The Woodberry Wetlands nature reserve on Stoke Newington’s east reservoir is startlingly beautiful for something in inner London. Wild flowers roam rampant across the banks and birds and butterflies shelter in towering reedbeds.
So beautiful, in fact, that to take in the surroundings most would happily tolerate a café offering only greasy fried eggs and watery coffee.
Thankfully you needn’t do so at Lizzy’s at the Coal House, the café in the converted former 19th century coal store.
For the healthy there’s bircher muesli or eggs any way you like them. For the indulgent, choices include grilled pancetta, or truffle mushrooms with chevre. There are a few less common options too, such as hot smoked mackerel or homemade salt beef.
It is a sweltering July day when we take a seat on the lawn outside. The weather doesn’t scream soup, but the chilled and creamy lentil, pistachio and mint soup was quite refreshing and plenty filling.
For mains I (the indulgent one) pick the grilled crispy pancetta, with garlic peas, parmesan, and poached egg, topped with basil oil. With such fine ingredients it is a cut above your regular cooked breakfast and costs only £8. And it arrives piping hot, unlike at some breakfast joints where the food seems to have been kept lukewarm. The added truffle field mushrooms are well worth the additional £1.
My companion (the healthy one) opts for a middle eastern style quinoa and cauliflower salad, laced with cumin and raisins. The light, fresh flavours nicely cut through the earthy tones of the accompanying smokey aubergine paste. The dish was served beautifully, though it was a touch on the small side.
A local flavour runs through the menu, with much of the food sourced from London businesses. Most of the bread – nutty flavoured seed-packed rye or crispy sourdough – and delicious cakes – think date and cashew or chocolate and Guinness – are baked by the local Spence bakery. The ice cream is from a North London gelateria – we recommend the salted caramel or pistachio.
To my surprise few of my friends in Hackney even knew the reservoir existed. So I am somewhat loathe to sing the praises of Lizzy’s café too loudly, or the beautiful surrounding nature reserve, in case I might no longer be able to find a free table. But the food is so delicious, such good value and the café is in such a peaceful setting, this eventuality is surely inevitable.
Lizzy’s at the Coal House is open 9-4 daily and the kitchen closes at 3:30pm.
An East London enterprise is helping to tackle the endemic problem of food waste and child hunger in the capital, while serving up high-end baked goods. Founded last year, sustainable food initiative DayOld is London’s first surplus food box scheme.
One of its co-founders, Abi Ramanan, was recently named one of 2016’s ‘New Radicals’. The list, compiled by charity Nesta in partnership with the Observer, highlights the 50 most radical-thinking, socially-conscious innovators in the UK.
Funded by the Bromley-by-Bow Beyond Business scheme, DayOld aims to stop waste from artisan bakeries. It does so by collecting leftover pastries and goods donated by the bakeries, and repurposing them, selling them the next day via office pop-ups, treat boxes and event catering.
Speaking to the Hackney Citizen, Ms Ramanan explained: “I was working for the NGO Sustain, looking at food poverty in London and how to lift people out of it. Even as someone with an understanding of current affairs, I was shocked by the level of food poverty in London, especially amongst children.”
Ms Ramanan met one of DayOld’s co-founders at a friend’s birthday party, and they got talking about food poverty in the capital before deciding to help tackle the issue. They felt that there was a gap in the market for an enterprise that worked with high-end surplus goods, especially one that turned those goods over onto a secondary market rather than merely redistributing them.
Bakeries are one of the most wasteful types of food supplier in the UK, with an estimated 24 million bread slices left over each day. The DayOld team aims to deal with this problem by collecting everything from loaves of high-quality bread to brownies and cinnamon rolls, and reselling them the next day at a discount price.
Profits from the enterprise are then donated to charities that work to address the rising levels of food poverty and child hunger amongst low-income families in East London.
DayOld’s main beneficiary is currently the Magic Breakfast programme, a nationwide scheme providing free breakfasts and nutrition advice to schools where 35 per cent of children or more are eligible for free school meals. The programme, founded in Tower Hamlets in response to critical levels of child hunger in local schools, operates in 59 schools across its three target boroughs (six in Hackney, 25 in Newham and 28 in Tower Hamlets).
Ramanan says DayOld’s eventual aim is to raise enough money to help fund East London holiday hunger schemes, providing food for low-income families who receive free school meals during term-time. “Problems like holiday hunger keep children trapped in poverty”, says Ms Ramanan, who is quick to point out that food poverty is largely down to general poverty, which itself has to be dealt with. “It seems especially important in places like Tower Hamlets where you’ve got such affluence in Canary Wharf and such poverty elsewhere.”
DayOld is not the only food-based social enterprise with which Ms Ramanan is involved. She has also been commended by New Radicals for her company Papi’s Pickles, which provides fresh South Indian and Sri Lankan food for events, pop-ups and street food markets and employs women who have fled the conflict in Sri Lanka.
“It’s been an amazing opportunity [to be featured in the ‘New Radicals’ list]”, said Ms Ramanan, “I’m really honoured, and feel as though I haven’t looked back since I started working in this industry.”
A selection of Café SoVegan’s comfort food. Photograph: Jade King
I am not a vegan. I feel at pains to open this review with this fact, especially as I arrived at Café SoVegan’s home, the Royal Sovereign pub on Northwold Road, with my girlfriend. She follows the vegan diet that I sometimes feel I should follow too, given the often catastrophic environmental impacts of meat consumption, not to mention my waistline.
Nonetheless I felt on more familiar ground once I’d figured out that, aside from the open kitchen and serving area, this café is situated in a classic London boozer. There’s a spacious beer garden (festooned with posters advertising charity drives and the local cricket club) and a covered area where we chose to plonk ourselves. There, we mulled over the daily specials board, before deciding the main menu was too generously stocked with options (pancakes! a burrito! how on earth do they make quiche?) to overlook.
We ordered four dishes, all to arrive at once. My partner let me have the first bite of the Café SoVegan Seitan Burger, which we both ended up considering the standout of the afternoon. Not to bring things back to meat unnecessarily, but the seitan (a ‘meat’ made from the protein in wheat) had a firm texture and meaty succulence that was really a revelation – especially for my dining partner, a veteran of many a flavourless vegan mush-burger.
The patty is perfectly seasoned and peppery to boot, and the optional guacamole served as an extra ace-in-the-hole (vegan cheese and/or bacon can also be added.) At £5.50, it’s excellent quality and value for any kind of burger in the capital, and it comes with a wonderfully fresh Hackney Salad, comprising leaves plucked from Growing Communities, the Stoke Newington social enterprise and organic veg connaisseurs.
Special diet: a selection of the daily specials at Café SoVegan. Photograph: Jade King
I had the Mac ‘no’ Cheese: visually the same, if not as the luminous boxed variety, as the snappily packaged Mac ‘n’ Cheeses you see served at various London watering-holes. (Refreshingly, the portions here are much bigger.) The dish uses butternut squash in its base, and is then enhanced with turmeric, smoked paprika, crispy onions and of course, “cheese”.
Vegan cheese, from what I hear, is an eternally difficult thing to get right – it seems where one aspect of cheese is achieved, such as meltiness, one is sacrificed somewhat. Here there is a slightly missing cheesy tang to be borne in mind. It all has a lovely warm comforting effect though, especially with the accompanying kale. This adds a salty, semi-crisp texture that works excellently in the mix – showing the real culinary skill that married co-owners Michelle O’Mahoney and Davina Pascal are able to bring to this food.
The two other sides, which we opted to share, confirmed Café SoVegan as a proposition that will appeal to vegans and non-vegans alike. Firstly – sweet potato fries. These really can come out with varying degrees of success, a truism that I’ve demonstrated with weary regularity at home. The ones here strike a really good balance of crispness and flavour, and obviously go brilliantly with a pint.
The second was the Cauliflower Nuggets, which I was particularly in favour of ordering, as chicken is the only thing I’ve eaten in nugget form before. These were battered cauliflower pieces with a delicious spicy warmth, light as a feather and without a hint of greasiness – a really worthwhile addition.
Given the paucity of fully-vegan restaurants in the country as a whole, Café SoVegan is a project to be heralded. Vegans with a taste for comfort food will be in raptures, and omnivores like me, if not totally converted, at least walk away knowing what “seitan” means – and why they may well be dining SoVegan again.
Café SoVegan @ The Royal Sovereign pub 64 Northwold Road, E5 8RL London
The Buffalo wings at Randy are highly recommended. Photograph: Joe Woodhouse
Hackney Wick is virtually unrecognisable from its pre-Olympics self. When I moved in to Queen’s Yard almost six years ago, there were few bars and restaurants. Now it is a bustling centre for boozing.
Once upon a time the famously ugly Olympics Media Centre loomed over the disused canal, rendered inaccessible by a razor wire fence. Whilst passing one day I spotted a dead dog in the water and informed some Park officials. “Oh we know,” they responded breezily. “It’s been there for ages!”
But with the London Legacy Development Corporation’s regeneration plans coming to fruition, this stretch of canal has been transformed into highly desirable real estate, with a glut of canal-front restaurants opening. I visited three of them to investigate. On a sunny day, all of these places have outdoor seating in lush greenery, making it a perfect place to linger with a beer.
Out to brunch
The Breakfast Club, which started out in Islington, is like a TGI Fridays for the younger set. It is a cheerful destination that serves American-style breakfasts, heaping piles of nachos and a range of cocktails. At brunch I had the chorizo hash, which was perfectly serviceable, and my friend enjoyed her vegetarian sausage sandwich.
Later, to see what it was like in the evening, two of us attended a boozy bingo night, where a girl dressed as a grandma demanded that the bar staff bring out shot after shot of sours for the players. It was slightly corporate for my tastes but unpretentious fun nonetheless, and a great place to go with a group of friends or colleagues for a knees-up.
When I heard Mason & Company’s premise – craft beer – I was dubious. The Wick already houses three breweries after all. It is, however, worth a visit. From the owner of the Five Points Brewing Company, this is a glossy bare pine venture with industrial motifs.
The beer menu includes rare and limited edition brews from around the world, and whilst some half pints cost as much as £5, the selection is exceptional, with up and coming breweries such as Siren as well as local favourites Beavertown and The Kernel. Heading up the food is former Kerb regular Capish? with items like deep fried spaghetti balls and meat loaf corn dog. The menu seems to be a parody of traditional Italian-American fare and was too rich for my tastes, although would serve as good ballast for extended drinking.
Inside Mason & Company. Photograph: Owen Richards
Over two visits I tried most of the menu: the aforementioned spaghetti balls were forgotten by the server and never made it to my plate, but the steak sandwich stood out, tender and melting and topped with taleggio cheese. And for vegetarians the aubergine parmigiana was a fine option.
My favourite among the new arrivals is Randy’s Wing Bar. It was formed by Richard and Andy, two street food graduates with a family connection to a Norfolk chicken farm.
“They couldn’t give the wings away,” Richard explained, and thus a business idea was born.
Like the previous two restaurants, the menu is predominantly American-inspired, with chicken wings, popcorn shrimp, fries and cocktails. The atmosphere is unpretentious and inviting. We had a taster of wings, which include the classic Buffalo and Kansas styles, as well as Gangnam (Korean style), Bombay and Hanoi (a fish sauce recipe akin to the one from the famous street food outlet Pok Pok). Curiously not the only place in this line-up to serve chicken scratchings, it seems like the perfect local joint for a cocktail and snack, where I might head to unwind with friends after work.
Randy’s Wing Bar
28 East Bay Lane
Here East
The Press Centre
London
E15 2GW
