The Marksman, Bethnal Green

The gentrification of Shoreditch is now so advanced and so final that even those that still privately bemoan the disappearance of the old working-men's clubs, the spit-and-sawdust pubs, laundrettes and pound shops, have stopped commenting on it in public. That battle has been lost. This is now a place of wine bars, speakeasies, popups and street food, £5 a pint and £40 a head, the new shorthand for London itself, beards the new bearskin, tattoos the new Tower Bridge.

And I'm torn myself, for though of course I hate to see any part of our collective heritage priced out and forgotten, the problem with the kind of people who are setting up shop in this part of town lately is that so many of them are annoyingly good. Sagar and Wilde, for example, is exactly the kind of wine bar that every oenophile wants on their doorstep, an intimate and comfortable place staffed by helpful and passionate staff. It replaced a pub called the British Lion which was very popular with skinhead BNP supporters and had more regular visits from the local constabulary than brewery vans. Perhaps it is a shame that the "old" Shoreditch has disappeared, but I am not a racist, I am a glutton, which is an altogether more acceptable 21st century sin, and the new Shoreditch is far more my kind of scene.

The Marksman, just a few steps down the street from Sagar & Wilde, has, too, been modernised. Exactly how different it is from its previous incarnation I can't tell you because I've never been inside before, but I get the impression they're trying to make the change as painless and subtle as possible for all concerned. It's all very tastefully done and it definitely still feels like a cosy boozer, with wobbly furniture, bar stools and even a group of burly old boys occupying their corner of the room as they presumably have for many years previously. But look a little closer and the signs are there - table service, craft beers, and an intriguing new menu. Things are afoot.

Two freshly-shucked rock oysters, dressed with apple and pickled elderberries, just the thing for a warm summer's evening. I liked how they were balanced on top of their own shell lids, I liked how the oyster meat was loosened and I liked how the gentle acidic/floral notes that had been added to the minerally shellfish.

And I liked absolutely everything else. In fact I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed a more comprehensively perfect menu. A sign of a good restaurant is that the food you order you enjoy, and you're happy to pay for it, and want to go back once it's all over. Surely a sign of a perfect restaurant is that choosing between salt hake & potato rissoles, devilled crab on toast or beef & barley bun is just an exercise in satisficing, and that picking a dish at random would have yielded similarly stunning results. This is the beef bun by the way, a sweet, soft sphere containing the finest loose-meat pie filling, accompanied by an ethereally light horseradish cream. You could work for a thousand years and not be able to improve it, a thing of exquisite beauty.

Similarly devilled crab on toast. I've had devilled crab on toast before, very nice crab on toast too. But this was devilled crab on toast made by someone who finally knows what devilled crab on toast should be. Thin bread, just soaking enough of the juices without being collapsey, topped with an oil-flecked "mayo" so light it's almost a foam, and of course plenty of fresh white crab meat, fresh herbs and chilli. Perfect.

Megrim sole was gently butter-browned, the flesh cooked so well it lifted off in huge, bright-white, meaty chunks. The sharp & seasalty salad it came with was a colourful balance to the buttery fish, and was itself impressive enough to be a talking point. I wonder if anything could be improved about this plate of food, and I suspect not. It was, again, perfect.

As for the other main, curried kid with sourdough roti, well, what would you improve about a vast haunch of slow-cooked goat, dressed in thick curry oils and spices so that each last square inch of this beautiful piece of meat was seasoned flawlessly? Or a clever sourdough flatbread topped with a clear tomato jam, a nod to a curry house naan but something much more delicate and sophisticated? Nothing, that's what. This was, again, perfect.

I'd heard rumours of the brown butter & honey tart on the Twitter grapevine but still nothing could prepare us for the reality of a thin pastry base supporting a custard/honey mixture so precisely on the edge of collapse that the whole thing dissolved in the mouth like butter-honey candy floss. It was, of course, perfect.

And a chocolate ganache, smooth as silk, with a malt ice cream and surrounded by (I think) booze-soaked, slightly dried cherries, little chewy flavour bombs, topped with bits of cherry-sugar crackling. Which bit of that doesn't sound great? What would you add or remove? Nothing? No, me neither.

What the Marksman deserves to be - and what I sincerely hope it remains - is a perfect example of how a traditional East End boozer can be revamped and reimagined for a younger and more food-savvy audience without sacrificing any of the features that made it a pub (as opposed to a restaurant, or bar) in the first place. If you can keep the old boys at the bar happy, whilst serving magnificent, innovative dishes alongside a carefully-chosen wine list, then you have walked that line perfectly and deserve to do very well. Meanwhile, no matter what the future holds, know only this - that there are few better places to eat and drink in town, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to completely fall in love with the place. The perfect pub? Probably. The perfect score? Why not.

10/10

The Marksman will be in the next version of the app. But if you can't get a table, try my app for other options in the area.

Nightjar and Fifteen, Old Street

It was an evening that started out with such promise. Finding myself with an hour to kill before a 7pm reservation at Fifteen, I took the opportunity to check out Nightjar, a cocktail bar (or I think we're supposed to call them "speakeasies" these days for some bloody reason, like we’re going through our own pretend prohibition) hidden away between two shabby cafés just a little further down City Road. Down a stairway so dark I had to feel for each step, into an even darker room lit by little more than a couple of candles and the soft glow of customer iPhone screens, is a glittering bar stocked with a bewildering variety of alcohol, and two or three (probably - it was hard to tell through the murk) rooms of low tables and soft furnishings. It's certainly, once your eyes adjust, a lovely space to sit in, but all this would of course count for nothing if the drinks didn't match the drapes.

If I'm going to be brutally honest, although perfectly good, the actual liquid element of the drinks wasn't really any better than you can get in most of the new wave of London cocktail bars (Hawksmoor, Callooh Callay, Purl, etc.) - definitely enjoyable, just nothing out of the ordinary. What sets Nightjar apart is the giddily inventive presentations - a concoction involving cheddar-flavoured bourbon (my compulsion to order the oddest thing on any given menu kicking in as ever) was presented not only with a lump of cheddar on a stick but with the base of the glass coated in gently smouldering lavender. Yes, as in actually on fire. Similarly, a drink called "cold beef", with beef consommé, gin and marrow-washed Noilly Prat tasted, well, OK I guess but came topped with a teeny tray of beef jerky and with the stem of the glass threaded through with a boiled quail's egg.

These are gimmicks, of course they are, but they're the best kind of gimmick - fun and exciting and enough to make you want to order every single drink on the menu just to see what crazy bits and pieces will turn up. I've heard they do a drink called a Boxcar that actually comes in a box, and another presented with a neat half-shell of Cadbury's Mini Eggs. I had a blast at Nightjar and can't wait to go back and see what else they come up with. I left on a high. And then I went to Fifteen.



Is it mean to bash a restaurant that is also a charity? Unethical perhaps? The good intentions that launched Fifteen all those years ago are still present in some form or other - the website still boasts of the "apprentice scheme" that takes, er, 18 (not 15 for some reason any more) disadvantaged 18-24 year-olds from the Greater London area and attempts to teach them to cook. Of course, it's by no means the only charity restaurant in London - there's the Waterhouse in Shoreditch for example, or Abbevilles in Clapham, run by the First Step Trust, but it's still a laudable motive, and one that should be mentioned because if nothing else, someone somewhere at Fifteen is trying to do right.



But here's the thing - charity considerations aside, Fifteen is a rip-off. A watery saddle of lamb, the flesh having a good tender texture but surrounded by a thick, rubbery strip of inedible skin (and not at all 'crispy' as our waiter insisted), sat on top of a bed of crumbly overcooked beans and was completely dull. It cost an incredible £24. A Sicilian Fisherman's Stew had a single big langoustine on top which presumably was the reason they felt they could charge an astonishing £28 for an otherwise very mediocre bowl of tomatoes and cheap fish (mackerel, pollock, mussels etc). And a burrata and peach salad contained way too many sickly sweet chunks of peach and not nearly enough nice toasted hazelnuts, the burrata itself having all the flavour of a wet blanket. Starters were paired with a glass of room temperature white wine which no self-respecting wine waiter should have allowed to happen, although a pinot noir I had with the lamb was better.



There were a couple of things I liked. The house bread was dry and flavourless but it was presented with a great peppery olive oil, so perhaps it was only supposed to be a vehicle for that. And a cheese course was very good indeed - Montgomery Cheddar, Colton Basset stilton and an only-very-slightly-too-sweaty-but-still-wonderful unpasteurised St James which always goes down well. I even really liked the house limoncello, and a "margarita" they made with it involving tequila and (very clever this) a slice of fresh sharp chilli. If straws had been on the menu, I'd have been clutching at them.

To answer my own question though, no, I don't think I need to go any easier on a restaurant which happens to also run a youth apprentice scheme than I would to anywhere else charging me for dinner. And I'll tell you what's unethical - not a food blogger whinging about his meal, but a restaurant hiding behind a celebrity name and do-gooding credentials as a cover for serving hugely overpriced mediocrity to credulous tourists. Also, on that point, yes I know my track record with the Oliver empire isn't exactly stellar, and you may wonder what I was doing attempting to complete the set (Barbecoa, Jamie's Italian, Union Jacks and now this) when chances are I knew what was coming, but it wasn't my choice and anyway I was curious. I still didn't expect it to be quite as cynical as it turned out to be.

Ah well, onwards and upwards. I'm done with the Oliver brand now, and it's somewhat of a relief. Lovely man and golden-hearted philanthropist I've no doubt he is, but every time I've eaten in anywhere he's put his name to I've hated it, so it's probably about time I stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's not like there aren't alternatives, and it's not as if anything I say will make the blindest bit of difference anyway to the kinds of people who will flock to eat at anywhere with that nice man off the telly's name over the front door. If it's all the same to you, I'll just eat somewhere else in the future, and make a donation to a homeless charity. A similarly ethical result, and without having to spend a small fortune on crappy Italian food.

Nightjar 8/10
Fifteen 3/10

Sorry about the lack of illustration, the theme of the evening was mainly "too dark for my iPhone", though let's be honest, you never came here for stunning food photography.

Bacchus Bar & Kitchen, Hoxton

My, how time flies. I can hardly believe it was all the way back in March last year that I visited Bacchus, the experimental molecular-gastronomy restaurant housed in a refurbished pub in Hoxton. I had a spectacular, challenging meal, served by attentive and intelligent waiting staff and spent the next 18 months vowing to return soon. I never did.


The reason I never made a repeat visit was, of course, location, location, location. As a Battersea resident, for the time and effort required to make a return trip to Hoxton you might as well go for a meal on the Moon. But unfortunately that wasn't the only thing putting me off - you must believe me when I say there are very few areas of the country I consider to be obstacles in the way of decent grub; I spent the first 22 years of my life in Liverpool, after all. But after our lovely meal at Bacchus we spent much of the remainder of the evening at a friend's flat two doors down watching two people beat up each other (and various unlucky parked vehicles) with iron bars. I got a taxi home, and my friends have since moved to Stoke Newington.

Now, finally succumbing to market forces and the fact that a large majority of the fine-dining crowd do not consider carrying a bullet-proof vest and tazer to be the hallmarks of a relaxing evening out, Bacchus has relaunched as Bacchus Bar & Kitchen, and swapped foams for gravy, sous-vide for shepherd's pie, and Nuno Mendes (visionary gastronaut) for Richard Tewnion, formally of the Pig's Ear in Chelsea.


At first glance, little seemed to have changed inside Bacchus. It was, after all, a fairly relaxed space already as fine-dining rooms go, and with the addition of a couple of trendily battered sofas and a more accessible bar area, it now has completed an easy transition to a gastropub. The menu was pleasing in its Britishness - crab on toast, pea and mint risotto, sea bream and spinach - all tempting stuff. My first course was a rabbit terrine.


The generously portioned terrine was rich and hearty, shot through with just enough summer veg and sprinkled with salt to give it that extra burst of flavour. I wasn't hugely enamoured of the accompanying piccalilli (rather under-vinegared and slightly on the sweet side) but given that this was made in house I am willing to give them time to improve on the formula. This was a very successful dish and worthy of any top gastropub in the city.


Next was "chicken breast, potato fondant and cepes", and the first thing to grab my attention was a heady note of alcohol rising up from the plate. The chicken was attractively sliced and with a nice crispy skin, and the mushrooms weren't overpowered by the stock and alcoholic (possibly sherry) sauce. Although not a fondant as I would know one, the potato was well seasoned and arranged in a sort of mini-gratin beneath the chicken.


The best was yet to come - the bill, which was an astonishing £10 each. Given that these were two substantial and satisfying courses, we just didn't have room for dessert, but if we had they would have cost us an extra £3. We were even offered tea & coffee on the house, which we politely declined in a rush to get back to the office before our lunch hour was up. An extraordinary bargain - and I'm told one that probably won't last too long - so it's up to you to make the most of it while it lasts. Even if Bacchus hadn't been the lunch bargain of the century I would have still had a very good meal; at £10 a head this is unbeatable.

A trend has been developing over the last few months; it seems the less I spend on a meal the better it turns out to be. Of course I want everyone that can to go to Bacchus and have the best food you can get for the money in north London, but that was true of the old Bacchus as well. Whether their revamp will start attracting punters to the badlands of Hoxton remains to be seen - what is very clear even at this stage, is that if you do make the effort, the rewards are immense.

8/10

Pick up a voucher for 50% off your meal at Bacchus Bar & Kitchen from Carbon Free Dining