East End Review

Tag: Mare Street

  • Hackney playwright details foster care experience in debut play

    Hackney playwright details foster care experience in debut play

    Tosin Alabi
    Playwright Tosin Alabi’s debut play about foster care opens next month

    Tosin Alabi was 15 when she was placed into foster care with her 10-year-old sister following the death of their mother.

    Now aged 25, she has started a theatre company Azai Gallery, and written her debut play about her experience in care.

    Four Paintings, which opens in November at Space Studios on Mare Street, recounts those tough initial months after her mother’s death.

    “I went numb for a very long time, I blocked everything out. The experience made me a lot less family orientated,” she says.

    Being without a family meant Tosin struggled to grieve properly or even process what had happened.

    But her foster home she describes as a house “filled with love” – she was even surprised to learn that her foster parents were being paid.

    The experience of being in foster care she found on the whole positive, and credits it for improving her grades and behaviour as a teenager.

    She has less kind words about her social workers, however. During her time in care, she only had one positive experience of a social worker.

    “A lot of people go into social care as a job, not because they want to help,” she explains.

    At 18, Tosin was placed into shared accommodation for care leavers, where she said she received “no support”. So while her sister stayed in foster care, she was “just thrown out into the big world”.

    Four Paintings combines art and performance, with the stage set up as a gallery with paintings on the walls.

    “I thought it would be nice to have art and performance combined as I love both,” she writes on her blog.

    Tosin sent three artist friends the play’s opening monologue and asked them to create paintings based on it.

    “I gave them no creative direction apart from the minimum canvas size of the painting,” she says

    Tosin always wanted art to complement the performance, to challenge and explore its meaning on a deeper level.

    The idea spurred her creativity, and before she had put pen to paper she knew art would play a massive role in her debut play.

    Four Paintings
    10 November
    129–131 Mare Street, E8 3RH
    spacestudios.org.uk

  • Boceto review, Hackney Central: Spanish class

    Boceto review, Hackney Central: Spanish class

    A selection of tapas at Boceto
    Traditional and contemporary tapas at Boceto

    Boceto, a café and brunch place by day and cocktail and tapas bar by night, has opened on Mare Street at the former site of quirky French bistro Bouchon Fourchette.

    A little too far south of Hackney Central and too far east of London Fields to be located in a high density trendy eatery zone, Boceto nevertheless stands in good company next to infamous and hallowed institution The Dolphin (which might explain why the bottomless Prosecco brunch is not loudly advertised at street level).

    A sister venue to two other restaurants in the revamped Brixton market, Boceto, like its siblings, focuses on signature cocktails and small plates.

    The interior invites customers to linger: with the front shutter up, one can sit al fresco at a g-plan coffee table and observe the delights of Well Street junction.

    Further inside the long and narrow space, the decor is simple and intimate, dusky and candlelit after dark: a fitting ambience for perusing a drinks menu.

    Smashed avocado with fresh chillies and sunflower seeds on pan de coca
    Smashed avocado with fresh chillies and sunflower seeds on pan de coca

    Whilst its south-of-the-river counterpart Three Eight Four has an eccentric, almost humorous menu, Boceto sticks to the classics.

    The offerings don’t stray from traditional tapas fare, so chorizo, patatas bravas, gambas, croquetas, padron peppers and calamari are all there.

    But the servings were generous and all the dishes were good. The chuletas (grilled lamb chops) stood out, served pink with pungent herbs and pockets of succulent fat, as did the shiitake and chestnut mushroom croquetas.

    True to the version served in Spanish churrerías, churros were served with a hot chocolate pudding rather than molten chocolate sauce. The service throughout was warm, knowledgeable and helpful.

    What the food menu lacked in range was more than made up for by the kooky cocktail list, where institutional confidence shone through. Helpless to resist any cocktail that has chilli in it, I chose the Abuela, which contained mezcal, chilli, raspberries, chocolate bitters and ginger ale.

    My dining companion wistfully opted for the Bouchon Fourchette, in tribute to the closed restaurant and the steak tartare it took with it.

    This was a fluffy pink concoction made of gin, creme de rose, egg white, lemon cream and lavender, and served with a macaroon.

    With other enticing combinations like the ale-smoked Old Fashioned and the Gunpowder Negroni, I would recommend taking advantage of the £5 special introductory price for cocktails during May and June.

    Boceto
    171 Mare St, E8 3RH
    bocetohackney.com

  • Tonkotsu – restaurant review

    Ramen Photograph: Paul Winch-Furness
    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