East End Review

Tag: Spitalfields

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

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

    The Chuck menu. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
    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.)

    chucks-2-620

    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

  • The Frog – restaurant review

    The Frog – restaurant review

    The Frog restaurant
    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

  • Gunpowder, Spitalfields, restaurant review: ‘ inventive, funny, and mostly excellent’

    Chettinad Duck
    Chettinad Duck served at Gunpowder, Spitalfields

    Gunpowder, an upscale modern Indian eatery in Spitalfields, emphatically does not take reservations, and even at 6.30 pm on a Wednesday, the small restaurant has a queue forming outside.

    Thankfully, we miss the rush, and the real challenge now is making space for our glasses and plates, elbow-to-elbow with City folk fresh from work, tearing into lamb chops they’re eating with their shirtsleeves rolled up.

    Given its proximity to Whitechapel, famed for authentic curries and home to the legendary Tayyabs and Needoo, I would normally opt for the neighbourhood joints over expensive, trendy small plates at a self-described ‘home style Indian Kitchen’.

    Only, Gunpowder’s food is inventive, funny, and mostly excellent, and beats its peers like Dishoom when it comes to serving up posh Indian street food.

    We start with the Rasam ke bomb, an amuse-bouche meant to resemble a deconstructed masala dosa – a sphere of fried dough resting atop a shot glass of classic dosa dipping sauce. In other hands, this would seem gimmicky and twee, but here it is a delight. Following that, we devour the outstanding okra fries. Dusted in a tangy powder, they are a crispy triumph, bereft of the characteristic sliminess of bhindi.

    Unfortunately the chutney grilled cheese sandwich that follows doesn’t meet the standard set by its predecessors: it’s wan, on floppy white bread, and the cheese inhabits an unhappy limbo between melted and solid.

    Thankfully the dishes that follow perk us up again: I have a spicy venison and vermicelli donut, an indulgent mess of carbs and meat, then flavourful whole grilled prawns in a spicy sauce.

    Appetite fully sated, I struggle with my Kashmiri lamb chop, which is good but does not rival those of the aforementioned curry houses.

    My vegetarian companion praises the saag with tandoori paneer and grilled mustard broccoli. We finish with a molten chocolate cake and masala chai custard, dense in chocolate but not in sugar, striking the perfect note on which to end our rich meal.

    In retrospect, much of this meal is eaten with our hands – from the fries, donut and chop to the prawns, that come heads and shells on and that I have to pull apart myself, a messy and ungenteel undertaking but viscerally satisfying.

    This feels intrinsic to the mood at Gunpowder – it may be upscale, but it’s fun and unpretentious, and the menu is an open invitation for diners to get thoroughly involved. Recommended.

    Gunpowder
    11 White’s Row
    Spitalfields
    E1 7NF

  • The Gentle Author on Spitalfields Nippers: ‘These children were born in these circumstances and these photographs are the result’

    Tommy Nail and Willie Dellow. Photograph: Horace Warner
    Tommy Nail and Willie Dellow. Photograph: Horace Warner

    For over a century, Horace Warner’s photographs of Spitalfields were hidden in his grandson’s house in East Anglia.

    The Gentle Author, pen name of the Spitalfields Life blog’s anonymous author, managed to contact Warner’s grandson and see the snaps.

    They show the youth of Spitalfields in alleys, byways and yards, chopping wood, washing windows and playing games. In one photograph children are playing Sally Go Round the Moon, a game still played by children today.

    The Gentle Author points out that Warner’s photographs are in stark contrast to those by social campaigners in the same era.

    “There’s a lot of joy in these photographs. Warner knew these children. He was the superintendent of the Sunday school at the Bedford Institute and they loved him.

    “Images by social campaigners wanted to make the children look as poor as possible. The children became emblems of poverty.” The images join a selection purchased by the Bedford Institute in the Gentle Author’s latest publication Spitalfields Nippers.

    Thanks to information gathered from the 1901 census, the book includes more than 20 biographies of the children in the photographs.

    They show how the children went on to work as boot finishers, mould makers and pressers. There are accounts of families living on Commercial Road with four of their ten children dead. Others went on to fight in World War II and live until they were 70.

    Warner was a wallpaper designer as well as a photographer and there is a wonderful texture to his photographs, visible in the streets and clothes.

    The clothes children wear contain their own history. Spitalfields was the centre of the clothing and textile industry for centuries. Children’s clothes came from the Houndsditch Rag Fair, and had been through a lot of owners. The market was eventually shut down because the clothes spread smallpox.

    These are honest and compassionate photographs, carefully selected and bound. “These weren’t the good old days and they weren’t the bad old days,” adds The Gentle Author. “These children were born in these circumstances and these photographs are the result.”

    Spitalfields Nippers is published by Spitalfields Life. RRP: £20.00.ISBN: 9780957656949

  • Spitalfields Music Summer Festival 2014

    Arun Ghosh. Photograph: Naomi Goggin
    Clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh. Photograph: Naomi Goggin

    Spitalfields Music Summer Festival once again brings superb early music, new sonic explorations, innovative music-theatre pieces, family music-making and more to East London’s most interesting spaces including Christ Church Spitalfields, Shoreditch Church and Wilton’s Music Hall.

    The programme is led by Associate Artists the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh, who respond to the architecture and history of the local area, including the world premiere of Ghosh’s Spitalfields Suite.

    Complementing them are the brightest and best in early music; a series of collaborations between music, theatre and film, and 15 world premieres.

    Spitalfields Music also celebrates 25 years of its Learning & Participation programme, one of the first of its kind, with a number of events, including the London premiere of David Lang’s Crowd Out, written for 1000 untrained voices.

    —

    Spitalfields Music Summer Festival
    Booking information
    Phone: 020 7377 1362 On the door: 30 minutes in advance of the event start time (subject to availability)
    Tickets start from £5 with many events free
    Full details at Spitalfields Music

    Tower Hamlets residents wanting to make a first foray into the festival may be eligible for free tickets via Spitalfields Music’s ‘No Strings Attached’ ticket scheme.

    The scheme allocates tickets ‘gifted’ through donations from Spitalfields Music ticket bookers to members of the local community who might not otherwise be able to attend.

    More information via nostringsattached@spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk or on 020 7377 1362

    Young players on_Ebor Street. Photograph: James Berry
    Young players on_Ebor Street. Photograph: James Berry