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.
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