Dukes Brew and Cue and MEATmission - The Hipster Diaries - Dec 2012

This month, I'm mostly loving the Hipster Express. The whizzy new London Overground train line delivering Camberwell casuals into the dark beating heart of hip Hoxton since, well, Sunday last..

In less than 25 minutes I can be surrounded by all the skinny jeaned architects, students and wanna be design agency head honchos I could ever possibly need. Like exotic aeroplane trips that take you from the safe and known before dropping you unprepared into new and exciting worlds, the new Gingerline has thrown me into the mean streets of Dalston, with no chance to acclimatise from Peckham's green and verdant lands.

And the reason for this unprecedented exploration? Food of course…

Now we may have been travelling to (culturally) the other side of the world, but they still have to eat in Hoxton we scoffed nervously on the tube. Don't they? We'd soon find out.

MEATmission
Day one delivered us to the new home of a former Peckham resident, possibly the equivalent of eating pizza in Shanghai, but I wanted to ease myself in to the local cuisine gently. Much has been written about the might MEAT burger-based empire (some of it by me) and as I've just promised not to write about burgers again, I won't say anything about them, other than they are as you'd expect and hope.

Once you get over the most ambitious of their spaces, a wonderfully deconsecrated Welsh Mission chapel with a Gilbert & George inspired backlit ceiling, you'll be straight into a broadly as expected MEATmenu. The burgers are there, the sides are there and the cocktails are lurking with faint menace.

Not seen before and worthy of note were the Monkey Fingers, thickly battered strips of chicken doused in a hot and vinegary sauce, like boneless buffalo wings, served with a (too) mild blue cheese sauce. We continued onto sodden white submarine rolls filled with succulent slow roast beef and gravy. This was cheap and cheerful wonder-food, tasting like the white bread you'd use to soak up the last of the gravy at a resolutely home style Sunday lunch. Hellishly unhealthy, mopping up the accompanying dish of gravy with salty skinny chips, but after a couple of cocktails truly the food of gods.


Duke's Brew & Cue
Further north, the illuminating light of the Overground has touched parts other gentrifiers couldn't reach and brought hipsters and prosperity (or possibly only hipsters) to Haggerston. I've been assured that there's more to the area than a fixie bike shop and an espresso bar but that was by a man with a handlebar 'tache leaving me dubious to say the least.

The rough wood panelling of Duke's Brew & Cue (in recent history almost certainly a much less salubrious drinking hole) surrounds a new to the location micro-brewery cum bar cum restaurant. It's like a million and one Williamsburg hangouts (Fette Sau in Brooklyn is definitely one of their inspirations) and is currently still a massive hit with the locals. Even on a rain drenched Wednesday early, early evening we only just managed to squeeze into one of the unreserved bar tables.

I've been a couple of times, once for a so-so brunch and a pretty reasonable (and gargantuan) burger, the second for ribs.. As you'd expect with a name like Brew & Cue, you're only really here for the ribs.

We split two orders of the home smoked ribs, one beef and one pork. This was seemingly what most of the place was doing so I'm unsure why they don't offer that as a menu option. Beef ribs sadly were sadly cooked too hot, too quick for me. The well flavoured meat was cut through with just too many strands of hard, unyielding fat to make it as easy as it should have been to stripmine the bone of every juicy morsel. The pork ribs were much better, coming with a lovely deep flavoured meat and nutty hard bones to gnaw.

Sides were a mixed bag too. A cheap and cheerful mac'n'cheese didn't try to compete with the richness of the ribs, complementing them perfectly with a comforting blandness, house fried pickles and okra were just bad. Reminicent of the sort of deep fried generic vegetable sides you'd get in a Harvester or a Toby Steakhouse.

The food promised so, so much. In reality, it delivered some. As a place to hang out with locals, it comes as a strong recommendation. The bar staff were also excellent, though the servers a little harried. The cocktails are great and the brews on tap are also well recommended, strong, punchy and self assured. It's a shame that the kitchen doesn't quite live up to it.

 The roof of MEATmission... try looking at that after too many Peckham Negronis...

    A very bad shot of some ribs... blow it, you know what ribs look like...

La Bodega Negra - Mexi-can! Aug 2012

On a sultry Soho night, the office Joes and Olympic trippers trooping down Old Compton hardly notice Kate Moss extinguish her cigarette and stalk back into the sex shop. Is it that regular round here to see a supermodel (retired) in a sex shop? Given the in crowd's current predilection for hip Mexican La Bodega Negra, hidden behind the porny facade, it's probably not that unusual dahling.

Following Kate down the staircase to this modish modern Mexican is a crowd definitely more Chelsea than Soho, beautiful blonde embassy types squired by ex Bullingdon Clubbers. This isn't entirely a bad thing. They bray less when they're out of their comfort zone and here just provide a slightly well-to-do wallpaper. The rest of the decor veers from New York Underground cool (distressed brickwork, exposed piping) to second toughest in the infants (the artfully carved cardboard clad VIP room currently occupied by La Moss and the cool kids looks like it was assembled by class 5b). Not that any of this matters, because the 'atmospheric' lighting stops you seeing much of it, or the food, or your fellow guests.

The sevice was disarmingly friendly, with the exception of snappy, fraught bartenders, but occasionally bordered on slightly hapless - We went through three separate clean plates each for our shared starters (one of which didn't arrive until prompted and felt missed) and had our table turned on a ten minute notice in the same breath as being offered desserts. We were offered a space in the barrio chic bar to finish up before being moved on from there for another booking. All minor points, but given the ease you can spend £50-£60 a head without booze, these are things that need not to happen...

The tacos, a bellweather dish in any Mexican restaurant, were pretty good in the main. Street food purists (and most Americans) might baulk at £6-£8 for a pair of the soft shelled snacks, each a two bite pop, but both lamb with a deeply savoury 'drunken' salsa and pork with grilled pineapple were excellent. A prawn number was superbly flavoured if a little too subtle for the likes of Kate's smoke raddled palate. Better than Wahaca? Almost certainly. But at three times the price you'd hope so.

Mains were larger than expected. Given the average waist size of the crowd, I was expecting to sample a range of (very) small plates, but the mains were all plus size, verging on the American.

The Author and I shared an excellent lamb barbecoa, slow roasted meat falling off the bone, cooked till tender in a rich, chocolatey sauce and served in an enormous chafing dish that occupied the table like a meat filled Olympic flame. It's not easy to split one of those up in the half light of the restaurant but we struggled manfully through it. There were some great flavours coming through in the deep rich cooking technique, and my only criticism could be that it left me with barely enough room to finish my (slightly hurried) dessert. Sides are extra, expensive and necessary, the big hunk of lamb came with nothing itself, a bit of a squizz for a £40 shared dish.

The Publisher gamefully went for the sea bass that AA Gill had described as like "antibiotics growing on a pantyliner". The red and green adobe topping was tasty if more muted than described, but the fish was perfectly well cooked and not noticeably like a Bodyform. Like much else, it was a deeply enjoyable dish that I'd order in future. With a surfeit of meat on the table, Dr Vole went for a slightly disappointing mushroom and tortilla salad. She enjoyed the flavours and contrasting textures but it added nothing to my understanding of Mexican cuisine, and was pretty much the only option if you didn't want meat or fish.

I'm not sure how Mexican it is, but they've half-inched the Scandinavian inspired 'Frozen Berries with White Chocolate Sauce' from Le Caprice. I didn't notice any specifically Latino twist to it though it was as delicious as it has ever been. Dr Vole's Chocolate Fondant had the slightest spike of chilli and a quite superb Mole infused ice cream. That one is definitely worth returning for.

Cocktails were excellent and I was impressed by the food on show, though I'm not sure it quite matches the pricing. This is rustic food in the main, with a variety of rich spicy sauces masking a number of usually cheaper cuts. The premium is for the atmosphere, and the bar, and on a buzzy Friday night, I didn't have a problem with that, though I might do on a slower Tuesday service.


CAVEAT - I should note that after previously having a previously planned evening here right royally norsed up, we were treated as guests and had our meal, and a very nice bottle of champagne, comped. So that was nice of them. Given that it was to make up for a customer services problem, and not because I was writing this, I wasn't initially going to mention it, but full disclosure hey.