East End Review

Category: FOOD & DRINK

Rotorino – restaurant review: Italian cuisine made with cocky simplicity

Less is more: A simple fish dish

We’re almost a year late to the party here, but it’s always important to check whether a place has let itself go with age.

Opened last April, Rotorino, a pedigree restaurant from The Dock Kitchen’s Stevie Parle, was ripe for re-inspection.

Sparkling with dimly-lit retro booths and cherry wood galore, it’s the kind of place Don Draper might eat, minus all the smoking. But when it comes to the actual food, the muse is more Italian grandma than Mad Men.

That means southern Italian cooking made with a cocky simplicity, and a staff that get lessons in caring about it very, very much.

Rotorino has mastered the art of the super-knowledgeable waiter. If it wasn’t so very passé, you might go so far as to call them ‘passionate’.

Fresh from a wine tasting and on her way to a work-organised visit to a buffalo mozzarella supplier in Naples, our waiter was a study in restaurant ambassadorship.

From flavour to provenance to ‘Where did you get these enamel plates?’ there wasn’t a question that stumped her.

“It’s nice that they care. Because in Italy, everyone cares,” points out my companion, our food writer Gillian Riley, describing Roman lorry drivers who would fight to the death in defence of their mothers’ tomato sauce.

Mad Men decor: Rotorino’s chic dining area

Settling in with a glass of Valpolicella – or ‘Valpol’ to those in the know – we were seduced by many things, but all of our waiter’s recommendations were, no hyperbole, outstanding.

We took a chance on oft-maligned brussel sprouts despite Gillian’s aversion, born of a Yorkshire childhood marked by overboiled everything. But this dish managed to single-handedly bring Gillian on-side.

No chance of soggy green orbs here – these ones are raw, and shaved so fine you hardly notice them among chunks of finocchiona (fennel-cured salami), slivers of pecorino and a sprinkling of hazelnuts, bound by a magical dressing I daren’t try to deconstruct.

Two shared pasta dishes were exquisite in very different ways, the flavours in each so distinctive it was hard to believe the two plates had come from the same kitchen.

The mussel casarecce (tight, chewy coils of pasta) was described by Gillian as “the best pasta dish I’ve ever had”. Perfectly al dente coils of pasta with wet strings of salty agretti and fat mussels, it really did taste of the sea – a joy if you’re into that sort of thing.

In stark contrast, a petite but beautifully rich bowl of pumpkin gnudi, (‘nu-dee’) sat the other side of the incredibly-good-pasta spectrum. Basically ravioli without the casing (or ‘nude’), this flesh-toned set of glorious little globes swimming in a butter sauce, topped with crispy sage, is full of plump softness and indulgently rich. Both are really, really excellent. But every restaurant has its bloopers.

We went rogue with the last-minute addition of fried artichoke and viola squash from the ‘stove’ section. That was a mistake.

Ignoring all sense of proportion, a small, badly-cooked artichoke was plopped on an intimidating mass of whipped veg and apparently some farro, all lost in the mix. More than the depths of southern Italy, it evoked an overworked curry, or maybe even refried beans left over from a platter of nachos.

But this minor car crash was washed away with a homemade rhubarb ‘cello’ (as in limoncello, but without the lemon), and came with a lesson: in this era of hyper-educated restaurant staff, pay attention to what they don’t recommend.

Choice is the hidden enemy. Just let them order for you.

Rotorino
434 Kingsland Road, E8 4AA
020 7249 9081
rotorino.com

April 20, 2015
Verden – restaurant review: a sign of how far Clapton has come?

Bar interior at Verden, 181 Clarence Road, E5 8EE

Verden, a wine bar that opened in Lower Clapton last year, has been receiving rave reviews in the national press. Throughout, it is described as a locals’ restaurant, and a sign of how far Clapton has come. One review described it as “good for everyone … locals, especially”, while the Independent lightheartedly claimed its owners are here to educate the East End in a good vintage.

Yet Verden is far from being a neighbourhood restaurant. It was opened by a duo who worked respectively in PR and at Mayfair’s legendary and astonishingly expensive seafood restaurant Scott’s. When we went to dine early one Sunday evening, we were seated between a group who’d ventured there from Kilburn and were debating how to get home from the depths of Hackney, and a family who bought their young child a £17 main.

This isn’t to say the food there isn’t exquisite. Verden makes its own charcuterie, changes its mains daily, has a gorgeous cheese selection, and serves around 100 types of wine. Diners sit in an elegant, minimalist interior, with low lighting and a long wooden bar. However, when I asked our server to recommend some charcuterie and wine, he gave us chorizo and an unexciting Vouvray with no further elaboration – two ubiquitous menu items that did little to showcase Verden’s wares.

Exquisite: A wild mushroom dish

The highlight of the charcuterie was the lardo: glistening cubes of pork fat layered with sea salt and rosemary. Following onto the mains, there should have been three to choose from, but the restaurant had run out of the lemon sole, leaving us as options a lamb neck dish with braised baby gem lettuce (flawlessly prepared but also not revelatory in any way), and a cold burrata with peperonata that, while also faultless, was hardly suitable for a cold and rainy March evening.

The salted caramel chocolate pot that we finished with was rich, velvety and luxurious, and the wedge of Epoisses cheese had just the right ratio of pungency to creaminess, but we left Verden feeling that something was lacking: standing around the corner from a closed community centre and African takeaway, it lacked the warmth and DIY cheer I associate with Hackney, and as long term locals, we did not feel particularly welcome or at home.

Verden
181 Clarence Road, E5 8EE
verdene5.com

April 17, 2015
Absolutely pho-bulous food from Hanoi by way of Shoreditch

Gillian Riley goes on a mission to make Vietnamese food. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

The best antidote to an overload of warming British winter stodge is the light, bright, fragrant food of Vietnam. We can enjoy it in Hackney, thanks to a cluster of food stores and places to eat, some in Shoreditch, some on Mare Street.

An evening stroll in Shoreditch, at the end of Kingsland Road, revealed a resolute line of diners outside Sông Quê patiently waiting to get in. No hope. But back at noon the following day, exhausted by a bewildering foray into the Longdan supermarket, I collapsed into a bowl of pho, the archetypal comfort food of Vietnam. The ineffable lightness of the broth with its dense but subtle flavours, wafts the cold and hungry food historian into a beguiling comfort zone.
Trying to make pho at home would be counterproductive, so many ingredients, many of them secret, and so much skill is involved, but the small side dish of aromatics can transform many domestic recipes. The supermarket has a refrigerated display of Vietnamese herbs. The other day I counted five different kinds of mint, three of basil, and the wonderfully aromatic perilla, with its purplish leaves and lemony, minty flavour.

The demographics of the Vietnamese presence in London are confusing; an unofficial count of 5,000 shows it’s a small proportion of Hackney’s population, slipping under the radar, but beckoning clients from all over North London to shop and eat here. We are not a hub, like New Malden is for Korea, where 20,000 of the total 30,000 Koreans in the UK live.

The vast land mass of the Indo-Chinese peninsula has a complex history and a variety of cuisines. All three of Vietnam’s geographical areas have a special kind of cooking, but share a tumultuous history, from Chinese dominion for over 2,000 years to the recent tragic horrors of the Cold War. The fertile but much misused land produces fine ingredients and an amazing range of aromatic herbs and vegetables, and people as gentle and bright as their cuisine.

Balance of sensations

The five flavours of Vietnamese cooking are spicy, bitter, sour, salty and sweet, which are used to enhance or adjust the qualities of the ingredients. Colour comes into it too. Red, black, white, green, yellow, all have a special significance. Taste, texture, aroma and mouth-feel all combine to achieve a balance of sensations, from the crispness of deep fried batter-coated prawns, to the crunch of fried shallot on a crisp papaya salad, to the slithery bite of a rice-pancake wrapped salad roll, or the gooey slurp of noodles in
beef broth.

Each of the elements in a Vietnamese dish could be quite violent if insensitively handled, but the subtle combinations of ginger, galangale, garlic, onions, chilli and lemon grass, with the many kinds of fermented fish sauce and fish paste, and peppermint, spearmint, sweet basil, Thai basil and coriander, and many other special herbs, are gently aromatic.

Try it at home

One can eat, or browse in the food stores and come away with the key ingredients to try out at home. One of these is nuoc mam, fish sauce, a condiment with an unbelievably horrible smell and a sublime taste, made from rotting and fermented fish and their entrails. Liquamen, the Roman version, was manufactured on an industrial scale in Spain and Southern Italy and exported all over the Roman Empire. Some came to London, in ships that docked at Southwark, so it is not too fanciful to imagine the legionaries stopping off in Shoreditch for a bowl of fragrant pho.

Happy shopping: Vietnamese groceries. photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

For the sad squaddie heading for the chilly north, there must have been some comfort in smuggling a small flask of liquamen into his kit. If he could have stopped off and turned right up what is now Hackney Road, the most portable and fragrant condiment in the Longdan supermarket might have been a bunch of lemon grass. This herb is a lemon flavoured grass with all the aroma and pungency of lemon peel without the acidity of the juice. It is associated with Thai cuisine, but used all over South East Asia and brings perfume and pungency to many Vietnamese dishes. Our soon to be footsore and homesick legionary might have had the foresight to bring as substitute a plant of the hardy herb lemon balm, it grows well here, and gives a lemony tinge to salads and sauces; used with the native mint, coriander and mustard. We can use these in our attempts to cook Vietnamese food at home, while the fragrant herbs and vegetables mentioned above add an extra fragrant pungency. But the predominance of this amazing fish sauce can be judged by the impressive display of sauces and condiments in the supermarket. Buy lots, like me.

Duck with Orange

This is my adaptation of a
well–known recipe, of which there
are many versions:

2 duck breasts
2 oranges
garlic (to taste)
2 cloves finely chopped
a lump of ginger, size of a walnut, peeled and finely chopped
3 or 4 stalks of lemon grass
finely sliced
1 tablespoon Vietnamese fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
a handful each of chopped basil,
mint and coriander
some slivers of the orange peel

Cook the duck breasts skin down to sweat off most of the fat, pour this off and keep for something else. Turn over and add the juice of the oranges and all the other ingredients except the herbs. Cook covered on a low heat until tender (30 minutes to an hour). Remove the fat and slice the meat thinly. Sprinkle the herbs over, and serve with rice and a salad.

Green papaya salad is one of the stars of Vietnamese cuisine. Best done by a professional with a secret sauce and a machine for getting the hard veg into sinuous julienne strips. This dressing can work with any combination of salad vegetables, and cooked meat or fish.

Vietnamese-inspired Salad

Some sliced cooked beef,
rare if possible
1 cup bean sprouts, washed
1 head of blanched chicory
(endive), sliced
1 small red sweet pepper sliced
4 spring onions sliced diagonally

For the dressing

Vietnamese fish sauce
A little rice vinegar or lime juice
Sugar, palm or unrefined, to taste
Vietnamese fish paste to taste
chopped garlic and ginger
several leaves of lemongrass,
very finely chopped

For the garnish

Chopped basil, mint and coriander
Deep fried shallots and garlic
(from the supermarket)
Red birdseye chillies, thinly sliced

Stir fry the sweet pepper and chicory for a minute or two, add the bean shoots and toss for a few seconds, tip into a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients, mix well and slosh in the dressing, give it a good turn and add the garnish just before serving.

March 19, 2015
Jago – restaurant review

Baked eggs, spiced beans and peppers

A former carpet factory turned workspace off Brick Lane describes itself as “the world’s most iconic space for entrepreneurs and creative businesses”. A heady claim, but this is Shoreditch. Inside, it’s like being in an episode of The Jetsons, with several airy floors of rolling curves, potted plants, and Perspex ‘meeting pods’. When following directions to the toilets, I promptly walk into a broom cupboard. The building is home to Jago, a recently-opened restaurant that seats diners in a long bright orange tube; a ‘conservatory’ overlooking the graffiti of Hanbury Street. From our warm table we watch the February rain fall all around us, ensconced in cosy orange light.

Jago bills itself as serving “southern European, Middle Eastern and Ashkenazi cuisine”. This rather perplexing mix translates to an assortment of small plates with the occasional nod to Jewish cuisine, or at least traditional Jewish ingredients. Two such dishes were saltfish with smoked aubergine, and pulled brisket with beetroot slaw. Both dishes were a delight, carefully balancing contrasting flavours. The roast cauliflower that followed, however, was a disappointment: the cauliflower was undercooked and the velvety sauce it was served with hit the tone texturally but was far too salty, with a strange taste of curry powder. The scallops were served two a plate on an onion purée and topped with thick shavings of black truffle – another success.

Jago restaurant

The larger plates followed. The pressed pork belly was a luscious, melting pile of fat served with braised heads of cabbage, but the real standout was the veal cheek goulash, a spicy stew topped with crème fraiche and a salsa verde.

Our shared pudding was unfortunately a disappointing coda to an otherwise excellent meal: frozen cheesecake with pistachio shortbread that was too frozen to eat. As for the drinks, there were some surprising selections, including an orange wine and artisanal vermouth. The server guided us through our choices in a knowledgeable but approachable way.

Starting at £6 per small plate, with expensive wine, dinner here isn’t a budget meal, and unfortunately feels directed at a corporate clientele. Given the history of the area, I wish such creative cuisine were less costly and featured more Jewish food. That said, the food at Jago is inventive and painstakingly prepared, and I’ve not seen chervil on a plate anywhere else in East London, so a restaurant of this calibre is a welcome and innovative addition to the Brick Lane area.

Jago
66–80 Hanbury Street, E1 5JL
jagorestaurant.com

March 16, 2015
The Wash café – review

Coffee connoisseurs: Owner Josh Strauss and Dane at the Wash. Photograph: Independent London

A new addition to Well Street, The Wash café is a coffee connoisseur’s destination. Customers can first choose their beans from a range of artisanal blends and roasters – including a guest blend – and then the method of preparation; as well as the traditional espresso machine drinks, there’s an American style filter coffee and an Aeropress.

Owner Josh Strauss was inspired by spending time in Australia and New Zealand, and is determined to bring the Antipodean passion for great quality coffee to his business. He and his head barista will enthusiastically talk you through different roasts in the way a sommelier recommends wine. In addition to coffee, The Wash also has fresh juice and a variety of teas on offer.

As there is no kitchen, food options are limited to a few simple options of soup, salads, toasties and homemade beans on toast with a boiled egg. While lacking in excitement, this is perfectly pleasant lunch fare, and is served with excellent bread from the social enterprise Dusty Knuckle bakery. There’s also a good selection of baked goods.

Hearty breakfast fare at the Wash. Photograph: Independent London

Opened just a month ago, The Wash has ties to the community and has hosted a live broadcast of Wick Radio. Other projects in the pipeline include film viewings, pop-up supper clubs, a potential veg box scheme and a bottomless filter coffee option for nearby office workers and freelancers. There are other DIY renovations and experiments in the works, and the atmosphere of The Wash is summed up by a turntable against which are some cheerfully propped up records for punters to play. It’s a homemade, welcoming atmosphere paired with a sharp focus on quality coffee. A good example of the small, ethically-minded businesses that lend Hackney its quirky charm.

The Wash
206 Well Street, E9 6QT
@thewashcoffee
thewashcoffee.com

March 13, 2015
Palmers – restaurant review

Seared scallops and chorizo with Jerusalem artichoke purée. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

If you walked past Palmers restaurant on Roman Road, you might not make a point to dine there, not least because it’s often almost-empty.
But that would be your loss.

Unlike most new restaurants in East London, Palmers is better than it looks, not the other way round.

This place is decidedly substance over style. Located on the ground floor of a block of new-build flats in Globe Town, it could be mistaken for the dining room of a cheap hotel – cavernous and purely functional.

Large photographs of illuminated produce don’t do the place justice. A close-up of a jar of pickled onions look like a science experiment in preserving eyeballs; another of octopus tentacles illuminated red are actually quite frightening.

Run by a Czech father-and-son team, Palmers serves up modern British cuisine with a French twist – a suitably diverse combination for a neighbourhood restaurant in E2.

The ‘rustic’ food zeitgeist has led too many restaurants to think they can get away with anything as long as it’s served on a board. Thankfully, Palmers hasn’t caught on.

Nothing here is try-hard. Artfully-arranged seared scallops and chorizo with Jerusalem artichoke purée (pictured), and a difficult-to-master Bouillabaise are downright classy dishes, but big enough to be good value – and not a cheeseburger in sight.

Just out of reach of passersby buzzing below on the towpath, Palmers sits at street level near an intersection of the Regent’s Canal constantly traversed by weekend food explorers. In the search for a perfect Sunday roast, too many miss a trick by skipping Palmers out.

The Sunday feasts are a neighbourhood staple, filling the place at around £12 a head, and with portions far more generous than the sceney Empress across Victoria Park.

On a recent visit, a neighbouring diner was so enthusiastic about the beef she invited herself into our conversation to recommend it. She has it every Sunday without fail, apparently.

Beef being sold out, we sprung for the pork belly – a huge slab of the stuff with plenty of crackling and perfectly crunchy roast potatoes, topped with a tart cranberry sauce that should have been apple, but that’s by the by.

A neighbourhood secret kept too long, surely.

Palmers
238 Roman Road, E2 0RY
palmersrestaurant.net

February 20, 2015
Tonkotsu – restaurant review

A bowl of Ramen. Photograph: Paul Winch-Furness

Mare Street has become a new foodie destination, dotted with hip new eateries like Rita’s and The Advisory. The Narrow Way, however, still feels like a relic of old Hackney, untouched by so-called gentrification. So it feels odd walking up this stretch of road on a Saturday night, looking for a ramen bar of all things, where previously the best food offering might have been a Greggs sausage roll.

Yet here we are. Tonkotsu, which also has a branch at Selfridges, is not only open for business, it is absolutely heaving. A security guard at the door informs prospective diners that it will be at least 20 minutes for a table. Meanwhile, customers sit at the long, industrial bar, sipping custom made cocktails and Japanese beers while they wait. It looks like the restaurant staff are struggling to cope with the rush: we watch the waitress count table numbers under her breath and repeatedly try to deliver a broccoli dish to our neighbours, who insist they have not ordered it.

Tonkotsu, meaning ‘pork bone’, refers to a pork bone broth from the Japanese region of Kyushu. This style of broth is a creamy, thick, fatty pork soup made from boiling pork bones for many hours, and the stock really feels like it would turn to jelly if it were not warm. Served over a generous helping of homemade wheat noodles, and topped with a soft boiled egg, gleaming pork belly, spring onions and bamboo shoots, I can finally see what the fuss is about. This rich, hearty dish is well worth £11. My dinner partner, who orders the vegetarian Shimeji, Shiitake & Miso Ramen, finds her dish to be good but a little dull, but I suspect that even the most expertly prepared miso-based ramen will pale in comparison to the succulent meat stock.

We order a variety of side dishes – the shiitake and bamboo shoot gyoza are excellent, as are the crab croquettes. The salt & sansho pepper squid is unremarkable. There are a variety of other amuse-bouches to order, such as fried chicken, and okonomiyaki (Japanese savoury pancakes), however the restaurant has run out of these. They are really a sideshow anyway: we’re full and satisfied, and will have plenty of time to try the other bits when we return for another bowl of ramen, which we will assuredly do soon.

Tonkotsu
382 Mare Street, E8 1HR
www.tonkotsu.co.uk

February 13, 2015
Made in heaven – with love from Yum Yum

Enjoy a cocktail at Yum Yum. Photograph: Yum Yum Thai Restaurant

“Love is in the air, every sight and every sound” (Love Is In The Air, John Paul Young, 1978).

Well, we love you and you love us in return – that’s why we are celebrating our twenty-second year as your partner.

We are one of London’s most popular Thai restaurants.

Entering the gates and walking through the leafy Thai garden, it’s not hard to identify the secret of Yum Yum’s success.

Housed in a Grade II listed building, grand steps lead up to an imposing Georgian entrance that opens into an exotically themed-Thai restaurant.

With over 180 freshly prepared dishes, and 65 cocktails served daily, there’s something for everyone at Yum Yum!

So for the Love Month, we’ve created four special cocktails just for you to celebrate your evenings – we promise they won’t be passion killers!

We’ll let you into the secret of the cocktail names but can’t tell you what’s in them as that will give the game away!

Lipstick
Red Rose
Secret Passion
Yum Yum Kiss

…with love from Yum Yum.

rawn tempura at Yum Yum. Photograph: Yum Yum Thai Restaurant

For more information please contact us at:

Yum Yum Thai Restaurant
187 Stoke Newington High Street
London
N16 0LH

Reservations: 020 7254 6751
Deliveries: 020 7241 5678

Info: yumyum.co.uk

Email: info@yumyum.co.uk

February 2, 2015
Kaffa Coffee brings a taste of Ethiopia to Dalston

Street life: Kaffa Coffee on Gillett Square. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

The original coffee drinkers hailed from the Ethiopian province of Kaffa.

According to legend, it was there in the ninth century that a goatherd experienced something of a Eureka moment when his goats started behaving excitedly after munching on some bright red berries.

On his wife’s suggestion he took the berries to a monastery, where they were renounced as the devil’s work and thrown into the fire. The rich aroma of the beans filled the monastery, and led the monks to investigate further.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to travel quite so far to sample authentic Ethiopian coffee. Kaffa Coffee is located in Dalston. It uses beans grown on a plantation in the Kaffa province and roasted on site in Gillett Square.

Full of beans: Kaffa Coffee roasts its own beans on site. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

The plantation and business are owned by Markos Yared, who founded Kaffa Coffee in 2004. The original Kaffa Coffee was a stall in Camden. Four years later, Yared moved into new premises.

His signature coffee isn’t cappuccino, latte nor macchiato but a black, strong, rich coffee served in a small espresso cup with an Ethiopian flag.

Strength in depth: Kaffa’s signature blend. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

Kaffa is very much a family-owned business, and Yared’s wife Haile serves homemade injera and wat, typical Ethiopian cuisine, every Thursday and Friday.

A few outdoor tables are available to sit and chat and staying outside this laid back and unpretentious coffee place makes you feel local to the square.

With the shop open till late, Yared also enjoys sharing his taste for Ethiopian jazz, reggae and blues, turning Kaffa and Gillett Square into a very lively and vibrant place to be.

Kaffa Coffee serves probably one of the best Ethiopian coffees in town. Its coffee is strong, and so is its fan base.

Kaffa Coffee is at 1 Gillett Square N16 8AZ

January 28, 2015
New Dalston cafe makes healthy dishes from food diverted from landfill

Save the Date cafe. Photograph: Coralie Datta

A new café and sustainable start-up in Dalston is providing fresh meals on a pay-what-you-can basis prepared from food that would otherwise go to waste. Ruth McCabe and her co-director James, a chef, were inspired by a video by the Real Junk Food Project in Leeds, a restaurant that serves perfectly good food diverted from landfill.

They decided to replicate the project in London and were met with support from local businesses and the Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network. The Bootstrap Company in particular (also based in Dalston), helped by donating a piece of land to the team in August 2014.

So far the most popular menu item is deep fried tomatoes and the café, which aims to cater for everyone, had a large selection of vegetarian and gluten free fare, although it also serves chicken and, most recently, ribs. The outdoor venue is warmed in winter months by firepits and a chimney, although it will probably benefit most from the summer months.

Customers so far have ranged from the homeless to families with children and Ruth says on the whole the money they receive balances out the times people don’t pay. “Our aim is to demonstrate that you can start and run a business cheaply,” says McCabe, “and we have a policy of not judging people about payment at all – the point is that the food would have gone to waste anyway.”

The Save the Date café was built entirely with reclaimed materials by a core of volunteers and opened in two months. Food is donated from wholesalers at Borough Market, local groceries, and a high street chain known for their chicken that have declined to be identified. The café benefits from a tremendous selection of fresh ingredients and a menu that can be adapted everyday – “a chef’s dream,” McCabe says.

When asked about the name Save the Date, McCabe says she chose it to demonstrate the arbitrariness of best before dates on food: “They are not necessarily an indication of the quality. For example, groceries can only keep vegetables on a shelf for a few days or bakers have to sell all their bread within one day when it’s still great
to eat.”

Save the Date, Abbot Street, E8 3DL
www.savethedate.london

January 21, 2015