East End Review

Tag: Mina Miller

Sagardi – restaurant review: ‘The waiters wear wireless headsets, like they are in the secret service’

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.

Sagardi
95 Curtain Road, EC2A 3BS
sagardi.com

October 6, 2016
Jidori, Dalston, restaurant review – View-a skewer

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

August 25, 2016
DishNextDoor – review: feed thy neighbour with delivery service

Home cooked: anyone can try their hand at becoming a mini takeaway service

Online food retail is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. Giants like Ocado, recipe box companies, UK farms delivering meat directly to consumers.

All these businesses have identified consumers’ desire, on the one hand, for flexibility and convenience, and on the other, for an alternative to the traditional supply chain.

They combine flexibility and convenience with tech savviness: the Uberification of food, if you will.

DishNextDoor is a web-based start-up, covering some but not all of Hackney’s postcodes, that connects neighbours’ kitchens, so that amateur chefs, matriarchs, bakers and anyone else can try their hand at becoming a mini takeaway service for their community.

It provides home cooks with an ordering and payment platform (their website), free hygiene training, certification and insurance, as well as food packaging and a courier service.

The company presumably takes a commission to cover operational costs.

Well prepared: a Dish Next Door chef. Online reviews were universally positive

Each chef has a bio and picture, and the website is a showcase of Hackney’s multiculturalism.

Although the gender remained predominately female, there were many older people, and different nationalities and faiths, so felt like an avenue for interaction with people one might not naturally get to talk to on the street or in the shop.

User reviews were universally positive, making me suspect that community, not food, was the primary driver of sales. I can’t imagine that selling four portions of lasagne is a great earner, either.

The service has its kinks. I was enthusiastic about both ordering and cooking food for this article, before realising there was no delivery to my postcode in Hackney Wick.

Ordering from a friend’s house in Clapton, we found Clapton was not well covered either. Most dishes had sold out by 4pm.

Chicken tonight: chefs include hand-written notes in their deliveries

With three of us dining, and only five available cooks, we had few options, and not enough food from one cook to cover us all, so also three deliveries.

Our staggered meal consisted of a lamb kebab split three ways, a vegan paella and a haddock cream pasta.

The food was no better or worse than an average, home cooked, weekday meal.

I’ve seen a few similar services for Hackney and London, so it seems the market has yet to consolidate. But when it does, there should be enough cooks and variety that these issues will work themselves out.

User reviews might be more reliable, meaning one might be able to source excellent food. I hope DishNextDoor or a similar venture thrives locally – it may be a modern iteration, but at its core this is all about peeking into the houses we pass every day, and breaking bread with our neighbours.

dishnextdoor.co.uk

Update, 7 July, 18.50: This article was first published in print on 1 July. We have since been informed that DishNextDoor is to close down and stop all trading.

July 8, 2016
Hungry Donkey review: Greek street food a welcome addition to East End

Greek Salad at Hungry Donkey

In an area of London full of top-notch Turkish Cypriot restaurants and kebabs, the Greek restaurant is a rarity. Indeed I remember committing the faux pas of ordering tzatziki at a Turkish eatery in Newington Green and the cold, terse response I received. Yet I like tzatziki as well as cacik, so when Hungry Donkey opened just off Petticoat Lane by Liverpool Street, I decided to investigate.

An airy, modern restaurant, Hungry Donkey claims to serve ‘Greek street food’. The words ‘street food’ have been bandied about so much as to have utterly lost any meaning, but in this case, it represents a pared down menu, with a range of lights, modern starters, souvlaki wraps and towering sharing plates of meat accompanied by salad.

Immediately notable about Hungry Donkey is the warm service and modern décor. The restaurant may not have had much press, but it has its followers – when we visited on a Tuesday evening, the place was packed and we were happy to have booked.

We sat at a tall white countertop and perused the menu. Hungry Donkey takes its sourcing seriously, from the biodynamic olives to the ethical meat.

Transparency about sourcing is something sorely lacking in the lamb wrap world, and I am often torn between wanting to stick to well-sourced food and the fact that this would mean forgoing some of the best dishes in the borough.

As the meat platters take 40 minutes to prepare, we had some small plates and Greek wine while we waited.

The dip mix had a delicious bright green sauce that I incorrectly identified as broad bean – it was aubergine. The pan fried graviera cheese was a salty but less chewy alternative to halloumi, but the gigantes, white runner beans in tomato sauce, were no more than the sum of their (two) parts.

When the meat plate finally came out it conclusively explained Hungry Donkey’s popularity: large chunks of spit-roast, tender lamb, with a fresh multifaceted taste. For pudding we had what our server explained was a more authentic cheesecake, made with manouri.

It was definitely cheesier and saltier than cream cheese. My dining companion liked it more than I did, but it was well prepared, and I wish that more restaurants would stick to their guns with dishes that find a mixed audience.

Given there isn’t a wealth of Greek restaurants locally and I don’t always fancy a trek up to Wood Green, Hungry Donkey is a welcome addition to the area, especially in Whitechapel, which has some highlights but is not ready to beat Hackney Central at the restaurant game.

Hungry Donkey
56 Wentworth St, London E1 7AL
hungrydonkey.co.uk

July 8, 2016
Boceto review, Hackney Central: Spanish class

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

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

May 17, 2016
Lobster Bar, Hackney Central, review: sensational crustaceans

Under the sea: Lobster Bar is the latest restaurant to open on Richmond Road

There is now a lobster bar in Hackney Central. While we were all processing the idea of ramen on Mare Street, Lobster Bar opened with little fanfare in early September, nestled between Raw Duck and Lardo, serving seafood, steaks and cocktails.

Cristine Leone, its director, runs the popular Ivy’s Mess Hall and, until recently, the now shuttered Little Ivy’s on Lower Clapton Road. Of the latter, Cristine says its success was also its demise: “People who came for a meal would stay for hours,” she says, “which was great…” The small number of tables however, meant the venture wasn’t financially viable without cuts to quality. So the team decided that rather than compromise they would open Lobster Bar, where I can happily report that no such cuts are apparent.

The seafood is excellent: we had Maldon oysters on the half shell, followed by a smoky, meaty, decadent chargrilled octopus leg (more on this below), as well as seared scallops on a bed of silky cauliflower purée. The lobster melted in the mouth (partially due to generous quantities of butter), without any of the dryness I often associate with lobster. We also had a steak that was tender enough that I suspect it could have been eaten blue, and wasn’t just a standalone for those who hate shellfish.

The restaurant’s inventive cocktails featured a plethora of Italian liqueurs, and as I am wholly uneducated when it comes to wine that is not of the most basic French or Spanish variety, our friendly waiter gently guided us to a stunning Riesling, with sweet undertones but dry enough to partner up with seafood.

We concluded the meal with a delicate poached peach, wexcellent food and servicehich brings me to my only qualm with LB, and extends to most new restaurants I’ve visited in the last year: a sense of reiteration. LB’s tasteful, gleaming “warehouse chic” interior is so similar to its neighbours that after being seated, I expressed consternation that Raw Duck had shut, believing to be in its former premises.

Similarly, there’s food déjà vu: the grilled octopus leg, the single peach as pudding: both have appeared multiple times in places I’ve reviewed in the last 12 months, the peach being at the last three consecutive places I’ve visited. Rillettes and Burrata, while not on the menu here, have also popped so frequently that they seem on track to become the next truffle fry and brioche bun.

I don’t, however, want to detract from the excellent food and service we received at LB, which, on the whole, seems to be what we’ve come to expect from new local ventures, along with charcuterie and pisco sours.

Lobster Bar
205 Richmond Road, E8 3NJ

April 20, 2016
My Neighbours the Dumplings – restaurant review

My Neighbours the Dumplings’ frontage on Lower Clapton Road

As previous reviews attest, Clapton is now home to several quality Asian eateries. The newest among them is the puzzlingly named My Neighbours the Dumplings, which opened last month on Lower Clapton Road. As a dumpling fanatic, I waited impatiently for the opening, and apparently wasn’t alone in doing so: when we visited midweek, the restaurant was so bustling that a passing resident marvelled that she’d never seen such a busy place locally. It took us a few moments to get through the door as a decent crowd had assembled around the sake bar, seemingly just popping in for a drink.

MNTD has many things to recommend it. The general ambience is outstanding. The interior is thronged in custom-made light boxes, and the music is good, contributing to a celebratory vibe. The service is warm too. And the ingredients are clearly of a high quality, with meat sourced from the Rare Breed Meat Company. This is immediately apparent from the earthiness of the pork and lamb. It was nice to be offered ethically-sourced meat, which is not generally a fixture at regular dim sum parlours.

As dim sum is a brunch food, the food here isn’t strictly traditional. Diners do order from a tick box list, and the dishes are served in baskets, for sharing. The menu is carefully chosen, with classics like siu mai and sticky rice alongside pan-Asian fare such as a cucumber salad spiked with chilli and lemongrass, and a generous smattering of vegetarian options. We tried about eight dishes and although the general quality was high, some were more successful than others. The lamb and coriander potstickers were crispy without greasiness and the turnip cake with Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms was outstanding. The siu mai, however, weren’t firm enough, and the pork in the filling overpowered the prawn rather than hitting a balance. The prawn wontons were priced quite dearly at £5 (over a pound per piece), but were dry, with a thimble-sized portion of sauce.

Far and away the best dish was the whole steamed lemon sole in a coriander butter sauce, the coda to our meal. The fish, sourced from sustainable fishmonger Soleshare, was silky and buttery, with a delicate flavour that needed little adornment. Although the daily fish selection changes, I expect the quality will remain outstanding.

It took us far too long to receive and pay our bill, which came to £60 for two people with a soft drink and one sake cocktail. A shade too pricey for my tastes but I would definitely head there when hit by a dumpling craving – it’s local, ethical and the joyous atmosphere put us in a good mood.

My Neighbours the Dumplings
165 Lower Clapton Road, E5 8EQ
myneighboursthedumplings.com

April 15, 2016
Vegging out – The Hive restaurant review

The interior of The Hive. Photograph: The Hive

My partner and I recently found ourselves at a popular veggie café, sharing a pallid tofu scramble with squidgy fake sausages, discussing why so much vegetarian fare is inscrutably joyless. Whilst mainstream restaurants in East London’s exploding food scene make a point of showcasing the ever-changing palette of colour and tastes wrought by seasonal produce (but with meat), all too often vegetarian places serve pallid and underseasoned food. Yet there’s no dearth of vegetarian food on menus, which made me wonder if the outdated image of the vegetarian lifestyle was the culprit.

This might at least explain why the Hive, located at the top of Vyner Street, doesn’t mention its own vegetarian credentials too loudly. Instead, its website describes “a dining experience designed to enhance your lifestyle…our cold pressed juice detoxifies, our food nourishes, our coffee ignites the senses and our natural wines warm the soul.” If a bit vague, it at least sounds like a good overall outcome for anyone who has been to the pub too many times in the week.

The owners take their sourcing seriously. Mainly a breakfast and lunch destination, the Hive serves up coffee from the excellent roastery Square Mile, sourdough from e5 Bakehouse, all natural wines, and biodynamic and organic produce inspired by the Slow Food movement. The foods on offer are enticing and break out of the all too common staid fake meat and dahl framework found elsewhere. Breakfast here could be cashew ricotta cheese, made in-house, and marinated mushrooms on toast, and lunch courgette and squash noodles with coriander pesto. There is limited dairy on offer too.

When we sat down on a rainy midweek evening, we turned ourselves over to the chef for food recommendations. These presented themselves as tapas – first a wood board with carefully assembled amuse-bouches, such as a raw mini pizza made with macadamias, and a tempeh and aubergine square. Following that, a stack of grilled vegetables, served to us on a mini barbecue crafted out of a brick and smoking coals. I liked the playfulness of this gesture, full of spontaneity and creativity. For puddings, we were served an all vegan trio of caramel ‘cheese’ cake, lemon tart, and brownie, which were all good verging on great, possibly a bit chewy in the case of the brownie. Finally, there are many cocktails and natural wines on offer.

The Hive may rely a little heavily on soya products in its menu currently for my tastes, but it is certainly a place that I would return to, regardless of my diet. My only fear is that its location on the top of Vyner Street may not capture the right kind of passing foot traffic for it to retain a steady evening service. For the full experience, I would stop by for a daytime meal.

The Hive
286–290 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9DA
thehivewellbeing.com

March 23, 2016
Forge & Co, Joyeux Bordel, reviews: high life on Shoreditch High Street

Hot-desking and dining: Forge & Co

Shoreditch High Street, for all its tech start-up glitz, product launches, and photography studios, is still remarkably shabby on street level. But no shabbiness makes it through the doors of Forge & Co, with beautifully etched letters on its windowpanes, pendant lighting and East London Printmakers’ images on the wall.

“We try to encourage creatives to work here,” the manager tells me, while giving me a tour of the building. Forge & Co combines hot-desking with a bar and modern grill in the heart of Shoreditch, directly across from the Ace Hotel. My dining companion, a prop scout, remarked she had been here for work drinks, and looking around it seemed there were several clusters of post-work drinkers.

Forge we were told is experimenting with several dishes at the moment so the menu will probably reduce once they have gauged what works best. For us though the standouts were the steak tartare – chopped raw beef and shallots with a glistening egg yolk perched on top; chateaubriand steak with bone marrow and chips; and baked Alaska for dessert.

The chateaubriand, coming it at a whopping 60 quid, seemed like a quintessential Shoreditch indulgence, but in fairness it fed three of us amply, and the steak was beautiful. The gelatinous marrow, that we scooped out of bone and spread over the steak and chips, infused the dish with an almost cloying richness. The baked Alaska also deserves further mention: fresh warm meringue and tart blackberry ice cream; of all the menu items, this I will need to eat again.

For a follow up drink to help you digest your rich meal, you could pop over to Joyeux Bordel, literally meaning ‘joyful mess’, an underground cocktail bar on Curtain Road. You go down some stairs into an intimate bar space where we were welcomed by some cheerful French waiting staff who guided us through a selection of rare vintage spirits and a list of original cocktails, one of which included a whole egg. If, unlike us, you haven’t already eaten, there are decent bar snacks including the ubiquitous rillettes and burrata.

Making my way home, I was intercepted by a tipsy office worker with two female colleagues in tow, who judging me to be local, asked me where to find “a fun place”. Since they were clearly looking for something a little more upscale than Bar Kick or Prague, I gestured them in the direction of Shoreditch High Street.

Forge & Co
154-158 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6HU
forgeandco.co.uk

Joyeux Bordel, 147 Curtain Road, EC2A 3QE
joyeuxbordel.com

January 25, 2016
The Hornbeam café – review: ‘a true community hub’

Visible from a distance: Jenny Parker and Kate Bentley outside The Hornbeam Café on Hoe Street, Walthamstow

The Hornbeam café and community centre can be found on Hoe Street, an ancient thoroughfare lined with no-frills shops and eateries with local colour aplenty. The street made national news recently when residents lifted up a bus to free a trapped unicyclist, and again when it had to be closed following a mass brawl between teenagers.

With its murals, flowerpots serving as bike locking stations, and funky lettering, the Hornbeam is easily visible from a distance. The café is run by an organisation called Norman Loves – headed up by Jenny Parker and Kate Bentley and boosted by volunteers, who serve simple and wholesome vegetarian breakfasts and lunches made from largely organic ingredients.

A warm and pleasant space, the café also hosts film nights and supper clubs, and sells locally made organic jams and chutneys. On Saturday mornings families fill the tables soon after opening, while young couples as well as older residents stop in for a coffee before picking up fruit and vegetables at the stall operating outside. Children filter in through the side door on their way to music lessons upstairs.

The Hornbeam also houses the Forest Recycling Project, a community enterprise selling reclaimed paint at vastly reduced prices, diverting the paint from landfill to homeowners with DIY needs; and OrganicLea, a local growing initiative that runs a local veg box scheme akin to Growing Communities. People can sign up to the scheme in the café, which also operates as a pick-up point.

The Hornbeam has a loyal local following, with heartfelt reviews on Yelp. With the boost to the area that the new Lea Bridge station will provide, it should continue to thrive, as it serves people from vastly different age groups and backgrounds, and provides avenues for further involvement for those who wish to socialise. Although may look a bit threadbare inside, this is a true community hub.

Hornbeam Café
458 Hoe Street, E17 9AH
www.hornbeam.org.uk

December 23, 2015