London Dalston Restaurant Guide

“Every time is a different experience thanks to the ever changing menu” at this “imaginative and wonderful” Dalston venture. “The food really is a mix of European and Japanese influences” and served in a tasting menu format (either the 10-course ‘kaiseki’ or 4-course ‘omakase’) that’s “excellent, without feeling too fussy, and great value for money”. The “dark and moody interior” creates a “pared-back but buzzy atmosphere, which makes this a perfect pick for a special dinner”.

2021 Review: A short stroll from Hackney Downs station, this year-old sibling to Ducksoup operates as a ‘fermenting kitchen and eatery’ (and you can buy the results by the gram or bottled as part of their The Picklery range). It also operates as a kitchen from breakfast on, serving a short menu, which varies throughout the day (you might have squid risotto, or steak in the evening); and it’s later in the day that its “great list of natural wines” comes to the fore. “It feels very relaxed, serves lots of pickled stuff and the food’s all good: it’s a bit like going around to a friend’s house, who’s a very good cook and has a lot of very nice wine”.

2021 Review: ‘Pickled’ author Freddie Janssen launched a Kickstarter campaign for this new, August 2019 venture in hip Dalston – an all-day café sitting alongside a co-working space and urban farm, and delivering a funky-sounding menu which reads like a ‘pick ’n’ mix’ of global inspiration.

“Delicious food” and “attentive service” are the order of the day at this ambitious gastropub on the Dalston-Haggerston border, where the kitchen is headed by chef Tom Oldroyd, whose self-named restaurant in Islington closed down during the pandemic.

“So much better now it is fully vegan and more adventurous with its food” (“a wonderful range of plant-based dishes from around the world including Central America and the Middle East”) – this long-established meat-free chain started with its “old favourite” Soho branch (est 1988) and has mushroomed in recent years to include five locations in all. “Tables are crammed in” and the sites can get “extremely busy”, but its offering is reliably “tasty and interesting”.

2023 Review: This Dalston two-year-old from MasterChef: The Professionals 2019 semi-finalist Arbinder Dugal is a “very solid representative of the by-now-not-quite-so-new wave of modern Indian restaurants – probably the best in this part of town”. Named after the owners’ home village in the Punjab, it serves a short menu of tasty north Indian dishes.

Chef Luke Findlay brings his ‘traditionally inauthentic’ cult ramen (using ingredients such as Parmesan cheese or Cumberland sausages) to a duo of functionally kitted-out venues. First honed as a supper club, the Dalston original opened in March 2000, and a Peckham spin-off in late 2022. Not a huge volume of feedback, but all good for the big-flavoured bowls that had The Independent’s Kate Ng hail “a perfectly imperfect take on fusion food” in January 2023.

No journalistic round-up of East End restaurants is complete without mention of this unassuming-looking Hackney eight-year-old (est 2015), which has been a darling of London’s fooderati ever since winning (and quickly losing) a Michelin star in the years after its opening. But feedback in our annual diners’ poll – while positive – was, surprisingly, too limited this year for a reliable rating on its experimental tasting menu of funky small plates.

“Down a classic dodgy Dalston alleyway, this beautiful place awaits!” (there’s also an offshoot in Green Lanes, Haringey). “I love the good old Dusty Knuckle”, which inspires affection not just for its “absolutely top bread, pastries and sarnies” plus “excellent coffee”; but also for its social enterprise role supporting at-risk young East Londoners.

“Deservedly something of a local institution” – this industrial-style restaurant and grill “manages to provide a cut-above dining experience while retaining a low-key Hackney vibe” – making it the perfect location for the 2021 film Boiling Point, which was spun out into a BBC TV series in 2023.

“Full marks” say fans of the fried-chicken burgers, sarnies and other crispy poultry treats at these Haggerston and Covent Garden pit-stops. Order 48 hours in advance and you can enjoy the ‘Whole Fry’ – at £35 it’s their ‘iconic whole fried chicken’ with two sides and the dressing of your choice…

“The depth of flavour which Adolfo brings out in his ever-changing menus means we visit at least once or sometimes twice a month: nowhere else would we ever dream of doing the same!” – Adolfo de Cecco’s Hackney shop-conversion is “always a pleasure for its inventive dishes”, which meld Asian influences with European ingredients into an intriguing and individual culinary mashup. At any one time, there is a single tasting option, and he “manages to maintain high standards with each iteration”. “The front room is arguably more dull than the very light rear area, which is a sort of conservatory. And there are interesting choices of music at low levels”.

“Tasty kebabs and sides” that “offer a modern twist on traditional Middle Eastern cuisine” make this “brilliant” Carnaby Street outfit “a must-visit”, “in the lovely setting of Kingly Court”. The Battersea branch is “an absolute gem”, and there are now half a dozen outlets around town, including at the Market Halls in Oxford Street and Canary Wharf. See also Kebab Queen.

2023 Review: “Great value and unusual tasting menus, nice wines & lovely service” win all-round applause for this yearling in a Hackney Downs warehouse from Anthony Lyon (of Lyon’s in Crouch End). Head chef Giuseppe Pepe (ex-Pidgin and Marksman) is responsible for the seasonal, minimal-waste menu, and his “food is beautifully presented and served”.

2023 Review: “Mangal 2 has reinvented itself during the pandemic” with Ferhat and Sertaç Dirik (the sons of the founder), “transforming it from its previous incarnation as just another of one of the (good!) pile-’em-high Turkish restaurants on the Dalston/Stoke Newington strip into a totally new venue: still Turkish, but more small plates now than giant platters”. All reports agree it’s a successful switch, “standing on a solid par with the other good small-plates-and-wine joints around Hackney, while still doing something quite different”. “The noisy room is a little Spartan, but the exciting and interesting food transports you” – “the Turkish influence is not that obvious” but the menu delivers “good ingredients very well cooked” (although “the wine list is a bit too natural, with no other conventional options)”.

2021 Review: “Try and snag a corner banquette for great E8 people-watching” if you visit this quirky venue – the dining room of a Dalston (technically speaking Shacklewell) events venue where ex-St John chef Chris Gillard delivers some excellent, gutsy dishes. On nights when the venue has a noisy gig though, it can fall down as a foodie experience: “they need to decide if they’re a bar and disco, or a restaurant, because diners don’t want both at once: the waiters were sidetracked mixing cocktails and the DJ an irritant”.

2021 Review: This “buzzy”, well-known Italian (in the Arthaus building near London Fields) continues to inspire relatively limited feedback. Pizza is the most popular option foodwise, and reports say it “ticks all the boxes” for a good time. Its sibling Lardo Bebe is no more.

“Don’t be put off by what looks like a dodgy side street to get there”, say fans of Andrew Clarke and Daniel Watkins’s Dalston BBQ, who say that the “great food cooked with fire and flames” (and served “in the classic small plates style”) justifies eating “in a tent! in January!” (“you get blankets… it’s worth it and fun”). And there’s “amazing vegetarian options as well as the fish and meat”. But other diners in our annual poll are less sure. “Haphazard” or “too-cool-for-school” service is a recurrent theme. And overall ratings were dragged down by the minority who found the food itself to be “a real let down” (“considering everything is prepared over coals, it was not the charry interesting place we’d heard of, in fact somewhat bland”).

On a site that was Rotorino (RIP), this year-old music venue (named for a jazz album) is from the brothers behind Hackney’s ‘Brilliant Corners’. It has yet to generate much in the way of survey feedback, but London needs more jazz diners; and its Japanese-inspired robata cuisine received a big shout out from the Guardian’s Grace Dent in November 2022, who found it be “far grander and ornately executed than it needs to be”.