East End Review

Tag: restaurant

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
Chuck Burger, Spitalfields, restaurant review – ‘no nonsense’ burgers and wings

The Chuck menu. Photograph: Hackney Citizen

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.

Chuck Burger
4 Commercial Street
E1 6LP
chuckburgerbar.com

August 9, 2016
Café SoVegan, Clapton, restaurant review – ‘a project to be heralded’

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

July 27, 2016
The Frog – restaurant review

Through the front door: inside the Frog. Photograph: Tim Green

Adam Handling has come a long way since reaching the finals of Masterchef: The Professionals in 2013.

The young Scot took up residence at St. Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster, earning decent reviews for his modern, technical dishes as head chef of Caxton Grill.

Now 2015’s Scottish Chef of the Year is taking his first leap into the world of entrepreneurship – hence the name of his new Spitalfields eatery, The Frog.

Arriving at the restaurant in Ely’s Yard, around the corner from the Market, you’re struck by the amount of competition surrounding it. Food stalls, popular with locals and tourists, line the square, and signs for next door’s Sunday Upmarket remind you this is an area spoilt for culinary choice.

How do you stand out in such a colourful landscape? Handling’s answer is to blend in with the crowd.

The Frog’s décor is typically Shoreditchian. The tables and chairs are mismatched in a deliberately laissez-faire manner, messages are scrawled on the white walls, which are otherwise filled with empty photo frames (I’m told they’re just placeholders until a showcase of work by local artists is ready).

The kitchen is open too – so open, in fact, that you can see the chefs’ changing room at the back. It’s so perfectly hip that it feels a bit forced, a bit pretend.

The dishes are described with simplicity – a list of ingredients rather than a verbose portrait – and I admire that.

The à la carte has plenty to offer, but the five-course tasting menu, reasonable for its ilk at 45 quid a head, is the most popular choice in the room.

And if you’re still in any doubt that the place is aimed at local hipsters, the inclusion of a £25 beer pairing option should convince you.

The Frog puts far more emphasis on its bountiful selection of craft beer than its wine, and that’s fine by me. But ultimately, it’s the quality of the food by which a restaurant lives or dies, and the tasting menu lets you try much of it. And all ingredients, I’m told, are locally sourced.

There are snacks: a lovely, fatty, pork croquette with lovage; a sweet beetroot fest that’s a little too sugary for my taste; and a delightful cracker dotted with chunks of salt cod and little gems of citrus and pickled cucumber.

Then warm slices of sourdough with chicken butter, which made the bread taste like it’d been dipped in a meaty broth. Very nice.

The menu’s substance was made up of three dishes: two fish, one meat. These were worth the £45 alone, though they weren’t without fault.

The mackerel, cooked to perfection and accompanied by apple, avocado cream and titbits of fresh lime, was overly sweet. The roast hake, again flaky and divine, was ably supported by the smoothest mash I’ve ever had, and that moreish aniseed flavour of tarragon.

But the lamb, described on the menu as ‘Lamb, artichoke, wild garlic’, was so wildly garlicky as to make it unenjoyable.

The only respite came when you dipped into the puddle of cream underneath everything, which made me wonder if drizzling the sauce on top of the meat would have helped the balance of flavours.

The supplementary cheese course at just £4 was a treat. A doughnut filled with gooey fondue, and hints of truffle running through it.

Even the existence of a palate cleanser on such a menu is a pleasant surprise; for it to feel like a bona fide dessert was even better. The crunchy almonds with milk ice cream and dill would make for a delightful finale, but the best was yet to come.

Burnt honey doesn’t sound too appealing on paper, but sweetened with a malty pomade and toffee, the bitter shards of honeycomb were a winner.

If you’re worried about going home hungry – some tasting menus can be stingy with their portions – don’t be. I had to undo the button on my trousers halfway through.

Happy that I’d had plenty of value for my money, I took up the option to ‘Buy the chefs a beer’ for £4 each. Luckily the team is still quite small – I counted – but they definitely deserved a drink.

The menu might be priced to draw in customers – the place is only a few weeks old, after all – so go and try it soon. Such was the quality of the food, I don’t quite know how they’re making a profit. But I hope they do, because I’ll certainly be returning.

With plans for more restaurant openings in the coming months, this is just the start for Brand Handling. And for a first leap into the unknown, The Frog has landed well – not perfect tens, but certainly with a brilliant flourish.

The Frog
Ely’s Yard
Old Truman Brewery
2 Hanbury Street
London
E1 6QR

July 18, 2016