100 Hoxton, 100 Hoxton Street, www.100hoxton.com

100 Hoxton is on Hoxton Street which is having a bit of a renaissance and currently has a nice blend of pubs, places where you can buy 4 avocados for a pound (read that and weep Tesco et al) and more and more good places to eat. The latest is 100 Hoxton, which describes itself as food with an Asian and Eastern European influence – don’t let that put you off, there isn’t any silk dressage in sight and this is true Shoreditch – stripped back concrete, 80s inspired stencilled coloured table and Beirut and Haim playing in background.

There were some crazy looking cocktails available but we went for the standardly priced wine, given the sunny weather and drink to cost ratio it affords (priorities). The menu is arranged into veggy options, meat options, fish options and some sides. They do small plates – despite it being done with the best intention London waiting staff should stop explaining the small plate concept – we understand that duck for a tenner won’t be a huge main course and the concept of dishes coming out at different times and ‘designed to be shared’. When you expand your empire to regions which don’t understand these concepts, like Swansea, then you can start explaining small plates again.

I wanted to eat every dish on the menu which is rare but I fretfully ordered the 7 spiced quail and cod fishcakes with basil sauce. This frustratingly mean't depriving myself of intresting variations of duck, prawns, slow roasted pork and cuttlefish and other veggy stuff I generally ignore. The quail was a deep fried meaty ball which was as satisfying as it sounded – the improvement of KFC concepts knows no bounds – this dish took technique and the two tiny wing bones which remained on my plate attested to how good it was – the side salad was a well thought out combination of chicory, baby onion and a sweet plum dressing to cut they huge deep fried gamey delight. The cod cakes were very interesting – very light, pearly white discs on a bed of basil dressing. Not a breadcrumb in sight which helped balance the brutal quail assault. The fish was a tiny bit lost in the floral tasting dressing but it was an innovative dish and worth tasting on its own right to see how fishcakes could be done.  

My girlfriend had a haloumi and broadbean fritter. This dish could easily take on most onion bahjis in London in terms of taste and texture – a deep smokey, middle eastern flavour with cheese chucked in for banter, as good as it sounds and worth coming here for that dish alone. Excellent. A salad with shredded coconut and a million other tropical flavours which would compete with a can of lilt was also actually really well balanced and tasty. We shared a flatbread covered with onion jam and chilli and coriander which was similar and almost as good as the amazing breads they do in polpo.

Prices are all fair, the meats come in at around 10, the fish 8 and the veggy 6 and snacks only 3.50. All in all, 100 Hoxton is definitely worth a visit for inventive, but comforting, food and to see the East London take on food of an Asian persuasion - where else are you going to see pickled papaya? Just make sure you get your avocados whilst your in the area.

Rotary Bar & Diner, City Road www.rotarybardiner.com

The burger is dead is what the banshees of the Sunday style magazine screamed at the start of the year – but the burger shops keep coming and they are marching East from their Soho enclaves – first Meat Mission, then Hache (far too av to review) and now the new Rotary Bar & Diner.

Rotary is down the road from Old Street and joins Salvation Jane and Ozone by raising the standards of food in the local area. It is basically kitted out as a 70s living room / 70s office canteen – complete with model kitchen and small living room. However the kitsch gone mad look is tempered by the views of Old Street Roundabout on the right.

 The menu has the things you expect to see in this type of place – the smoker was just up and running on the day we went and they had the classics such as ribs, buttermilk chicken, burnt tips and other snacks previously butchered by TGI Friday. But when you come to a new place like this, you ignore everything and else go for the burger, it is the standard bearer which defines all other meals.

The classic beef comes with streaky bacon, cheese, slaw and a side of chips or salad for £10. It was a huge portion and the burger was up there with this best burger renaissance has provided – the toppings were well thought out, pickled slaw a sharp surprise, the burger held together when eaten until the last few bites and the ‘burger sauce’ showed pleasant attention to detail. The beef stood up well to these flavours and wasn’t overpowered by this diverse ensemble. The only negative was the delicate brioche bun, which, although fancy, has no place smacking it lips around these ingredients.

In terms of neighbourhood burger war this is better than Meat Mission and close to, but not quite as good as, Lucky Chip – the market leader in my decadent opinion.

The veggy burger deserves a big mention for sheer towering mentalness – it came with a triple stack of layered mushrooms and deep fried brie and a punchy don’t plan on kissing anyone for several hours pesto. Deep fried brie is worth trying on its own if you don’t have the uncarnal ability to order a veggy option.
 

In terms of sides the triple cooked chips were good copy of burger kings finest, and the salad was a thorough effort of a proper beetroot salad rather than a few green leaves with vinagerette.

This is a top quality place to come for your burgers and greasy food needs, with good attention to detail and a nice atmosphere – and although Soho is getting a bit saturated in these types of places I reckon Old Street will welcome this with arms wide open and two fingers up to the Sunday magazine foodies.

Bistrotheque, Wadeson Street, www.bistrotheque.com

 

Last Saturday morning, having squeezed through the hordes of Broadway market goers basking in this new concept called sun, we walked around the corner to embrace the calmness of Bistrotheque. It is amusing coming off Cambridge Heath Road into loads of warehouses and the only indication of a restaurant being the other people walking around lost and stumbling in mechanics and sketchy art galleries. Situated upstairs in an unmarked building, the Bistrotheque room sits below a very light and airy white vaulted warehouse ceiling with frosted windows. Assumedly the windows in place so the riff-raff still walking round these parts (everyone knows the crazy guy with a high-vis jacket who stalks people by Frockney Rebel) don’t start to lob empty cans of Skol at the candle lit windows.

The atmosphere is relaxed in a smart way – you don’t find many places with white table cloths round these parts but the brunch menu was very fairly priced, probably similar to most bigger dishes you will find on the Broadway market stalls.  I started with a Bloody Mary – and Bistro managed to break a cardinal BM rule of doing a tiny bit too much by adding chipotle spices – a BM should not taste like an Old El Passo fajita, however different or unique that might make it. They also served a home made lemonade that was so sharp it could have been used to sear off ulcers, in a good way. However the duck hash with poached egg more than made up for the smokey mary. The hash was crisp with a decent helping of large chunks of duck, it came topped with a poached egg and was finished with a mustard sauce, the only tiny let down of the dish being this slightly favourless, tepid sauce. It should have also come with mushrooms, but given that I deplore fungus I opted to forgo it. Even without this the dish was a very tasty breakfast, not dissimilar to the Duck and Waffle, except a billion times cheaper. My girlfriend opted for a blueberry pancakes with mascarpone. These were huge, frisbee sized pancakes which upgraded the richness of cream with the richness of a creamy cheese, well played.

The restaurant service is smart, all ipads and table cloth scraping but it is a pleasant place and definitely worth a visit with the evening menu looking pretty special. It isn’t cheap, but this is definitely somewhere to go when you have won some money or the parents are paying or you are planning on proposing to your mistress or something.

Bouchon Fourchette, Mare Street, http://www.bouchonfourchette.co.uk

 

Situating a French Bistro next to the Dolphin on Mare Street is a bit like putting the Eiffel Tower in Grimsby. This was confirmed when we arrived at Bouchon Fourchette and the warm blue lighting which lit the room emanated from two police cars and a police van outside arresting someone. You don’t get atmosphere like this in Le Gavroche, but if I didn’t love this type of atmosphere I would be crying whilst looking on Zoopla for a flat in Highgate.

 

The converted shop feels like a proper restaurant, in terms of there being no east London benches, all the chair matched, there wasn’t a ‘small plate’ in sight, and meals came out at the fashion of - starter – main – desert. Hurrah! There was even a family in there. There was obviously exposed brick, but I am now sure this is part of an obscure Hackney licensing law.

 

The menu is traditional French fare at incredibly good prices. We started with a camembert which came spiked with garlic and a side salad with a French dressing. It had the classic feety twang everyone now loves and stayed impressively runny throughout the dining time. Nothing angers one more than jabbing your bread at solidified cheese before resorting to peeling it off with your nails. However, it was runny boxed cheese and salad. I am not sure how French people eat camembert but if isn’t with bread then it is confusing.  However an order of bread quickly provided an appropriate vessel to funnel the molten cheese into face. For the main I went with the fish of the day – which was Lemon Sole – on the menu for £11. This was confusing given that in normal establishments the bones of the Lemon Sole normally clock in at £11. The fish came and was pleasingly cooked, charred but still moist and a surprisingly good portion for just over a tenner.

 

Pleasingly BF didn’t opt for the annoying tact of a providing cheap protein only to discover it comes with a single (or no) leaf to leave you wantonly wondering if you should order chips. The side was a generous double portion of green beans wrapped in bacon. My girlfriend got a French take on the aubergine parmigana of courgette gratin which actually works much better: the courgettes don’t turn to mush and held the tomato sauce, which could of held its own as a soup or amouse bouche. It only cost £8! Anyone taking out a vegetarian go here and confound their fear of French food (and hopefully trick them into going into a Parisian restaurant to find out the only veggy thing they can eat is Onion Soup laced with beef stock).

 

Desert was an deep tasting concoction of home-made chocolate sauce, brownie and cream and more sauce with ice cream (chocolate obvs) in a sundae glass for two people which was a reasonable £7. The bottled house wine (they have house barrel as well) was notably tasty and they had a really nice desert wine – I think, it was like drinking thin alchoholic syrup - at fair prices. Just in case you didn’t feel like you were robbing the place they even have an offer for a free glass of house wine with any main course in April.

 

The only criticism I can think of was that it was a tiny bit cold in the restaurant but everywhere which isn’t a new build is cold in hackney at the moment. Bouchon Fourchette is the 'dream' neighbourhood restaurant – everything is good value, the food is interesting, comforting and tasty and service is relaxed and friendly. Also after getting nicely drunk on French wine and you can go do 9 Sambucas in the Dolphin afterwards. Win, win.

The Hackney Pearl, Prince Edward Road, www.thehackneypearl.com

Last Friday night I took the bold move of sitting on the 55 bus and leaving the safe confines of Hackney Road for the mysterious Hackney Wick. It is a mystery as I want to somehow penetrate and I don’t know why. It is strange place sandwiched between tall and warmly glowing new flats overlooking our fabulous Olympic artefacts and a hotchpotch of real factories and converted factories. The converted factories are special flats, all big windows and envy inspiring rafters and crumbling brick. Unfortunately the place doesn’t seem to have been matched by the catering community, an hour of wandering around Fish Island provided two options of Crate and the Hackney Pearl – however, as it was Friday night and half of the populous seemed to be in the very amiable Crate we opted for the pearl.

 

It sits on one of the many incredibly quiet roads in the area, so much so that in the summer there are benches in the middle of the road. I suspect that this road is actually closed and it isn’t pressurising its customers to risk death for sunny seating options. On a cold and rainy spring Friday we opted to sit inside. It is an ex-shop and has been kitted out in mismatched retro tables and other bric-a-brac you expect to find in a hackney place of dining – although this doesn’t have the try hard atmosphere forced on some, it wears it spots naturally.

 

The food here isn’t cheap – most of the mains, including veggy, are around or above the £12 mark. Seeing as it was going to be expensive I obviously went big and went for the Onglet steak with thrice cooked chips. The steak was cooked perfectly rare, but being an onglet it is its destiny is to be a tiny bit chewy. Disappointingly it came with a nice Parisian butter that obviously had just been taken out the fridge so spent the first few minutes sadly sitting on the steak refusing to melt. When it eventually did it was very nice and brought the dish together. The chips were good though probably didn’t need the third cooking session as they began to take on a more roast potato structure. My girlfriend's dish was a better accomplishment of cauliflower fritters, imagine huge cinamon spiked onion bahjis, and pickle/chutney with a green ragu. The ragu in itself was an innovative bright green concoction which screamed of health and vitamins. An apple crumble for desert was excellent but the hard shake coaxed from the brunch menu was more of a double vodka and milk, effective for pissheads with heartburn but not a drink I would quickly return too.

 

The Pearl also has very nice brunch and lunch menu and having been on a summer's day it is a great sun trap, albeit more industrial estate than a country pub Sunday but that is what you want sometimes. The staff are friendly and it is a a very nice place to go to laze away a Sunday or Bank Holiday. This will be a stalwart of the Wick as it develops and once the ‘Queen Elizabeth II Park’ (still weird) is open and more punters flood the area it will definitely be the go-to place alongside Crate.

Monikers, Hoxton Square, www.monikers.co.uk

Monikers is sat in the top corner of Hoxton Square in (what seems) an old school building which has been popped up as various bars in recent years, it brings a more upmarket feel to the various bar / restaurants on the square churning out burgers of various guises. The building has reclaimed the former school vibe and offers specials on a school blackboard, various old maps and periodic tables dotted around and they have dug out the old wood flooring found in multipurpose school assembly halls / gyms / school lunch room (presuming you went to a school that didn’t cost money). Oh and water came from a beaker – convenient for measuring how little hydration you’re getting as you pile through wine.

The food is mainly a range of small plates at the normal costing from £4 – 12ish depending on if it is a small small plate, a small plate or a big small plate. There were also some proper big plate specials on the blackboard, which we didn’t have a chance to try. We sampled quite a few of the small plates which offered a nice range of dishes – I went for chorizo sausages in honey and mustard sauce, a tasty pre-meal snack, buttermilk chicken wings with tartar sauce, an interesting combination with tartar sauce seemingly working well with anything battered and deep fried.

The bigger small dish of steak salad, was very good, a rare hangar steak thinly sliced over an Asian style salad dressing. My girlfriend had mushroom gnocchi which came in a cream sauce. This was good but not a dish to go for following the leeks with truffle oil and parmesan – ironically a meal with about 20 dishes and the leeks were the most accomplished dish, they tasted like they had been poached in butter (in a good way) and were sumptuous with a spikey parmesan punch. As we went the day before St Davids day I am also claiming this is a distinctly Welsh dish. A vat of chocolate mousse desert was very good and the cheese board could have done with another cheese but it did have an amazing soft cheese which looked like brie but tasted of a blue cheese which was worth getting on its own right.

The restaurant was still in soft opening mode when I went there so I wouldn’t assume that this is the finished product. But on this outing the only negatives from Monikers was that if it is quiet then you can feel like you are in an awkward detention and when the music came on it was 90s indie. This was a step in school memories too far. To be clear, Oasis is suitable for pre-lash drinks music on a sat night but not restauranting. But am sure the quietness and music was down to it being the first week. However Monikers offers is an enjoyable, friendly and relaxed (non-burger) restaurant in the heart of Hoxton Square. Although I didn’t try any of the specials they showed that this is a pretty ambitious kitchen which won’t turn out your standard small plate fare and it will deservedly get busier over the next few months.

 

Also, for those of you with an inane curiousity about what a 'moniker' is - it is the graffiti on the side of a freight train, of course.

The Looking Glass, Hackney Road, http://lookingglasslondon.co.uk/

Some people moan about the rapid gentrification of Hackney, however a small part of me sings with joy every time I see one of the many Hackney Road Handbag wholesalers give way to something I can enjoy. A road needs one shop selling handbags with discounts on orders over 100, maybe two at a push, Hackney Road inexplicably has about 30.

 

The Looking Glass cocktail bar has now appeared opposite the junction with Columbia Road and the shop which sells chairs for about a grand each – the other side of ridiculousness on Hackney Road. It hasn’t gone for anything too renegade and contains the stripped back and moodily lit atmosphere which has worked so well for bars like Rubys. But there are a number of huge renaissance sofas which give the bar a more of a upmarket feel than many similar bars in the area.

The cocktails are on the expensive side (~£10), however these are proper cocktails. What gastropubs did in raising pub food quality there needs to a similar conjoined verb and noun for these places; Gastails works with me. The cocktail I had came with a chocolate spray spritz so that the rum based drink had an inexplicable aroma of chocolate without overpowering the taste of rum. It also came with a block of chocolate to eat on the side which was confusing but who doesn’t like bonus chocolate. My girlfriend’s drink (served in tea cup obviously) had a lemony aroma and taste not dissimilar to something you would treat congestion with, in a good way. The service was great and they were willing to adjust flavours for personal tastes.

The Looking Glass also has a secret section at the back, (what self-respecting bar nowadays doesn’t?) in which you can pull a huge floor to ceiling mirror which swings back to reveal more seating at the back. This could be a cruel trick which leads to awful injuries as a 1 tonne mirror falls on you, so you will need a certain amount of trust with this. The Looking Glass is a nice place for a date, post meal drink or to just sit in the huge decadent chaise sofa which faces out onto Hackney Road and watch the world go by as you hope the gentrification is complete to the stage that no one stops and urinates / vomits on the window.