The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Table talk
Michael Deacon joins the hipsters of Hackney
Since THIS week’s IS Sue of the magazine is dedicated to fashion, I’ve been asked to find an appropriate rest aura nt. Somewhere people who work in fashion might want togo. unfortunately, this has been difficult, because all the restaurants I know of serve food.
It had never crossed my mind before, but now that I think about it, it seems very unfair. Supermodels and fashion journalists are being cruelly alienated by a restaurant trade that caters only for people who eat. It’s discrimination of the most ignorant, small-minded kind. Perhaps I’ll launch a restaurant of my own, aimed at the supermodel and fashion-journalist demographic. I can picture the menu now.
To start, a pipette of organic ally refined rainwater, presented on a single leaf of tatsoi. For the main course, pan-fried oxygen, served on a bed of carbon dioxide withque nell es of hydrogen and helium tar tare. And to finish, a memory of ice cream, topped with a figment of chocolate sauce.
Alternatively: a completely normal menu, except the waiter not only brings you the food but sits down and eats it for you.
I really do think I might be onto something. For the time being, though, I have are view to file, and so, in lieu of a restaurant where fashion types actually go, I’ve chosen a restaurant that at least looks like somewhere they might. It’s The Laughing Heart, in
We arrived at 9.15pm. By 9.45, we’d been served six dishes. In some places, they’d barely have brought our drinks
east London. On first glance, it looks like just another trendy hipster bar. Its diners are young. It has barebrick walls. It has an open kitchen. The water is served from repurposed wine bottles. The tables aren’t set; instead, the diner finds his or her cutlery stored in a tiny drawer built into the table, for no obvious reason other than that it’s cute. Our waiter, meanwhile, had a beard as big as a gorse bush. He can’t have been more than 25 years old.
Something, however, marks The Laughing Heart out from other hipster haunts. Put it like this. The tables are little, and mostly for two. It’s strikingly dark. The background music is R&B. The dishes are light, and appear with almost startling efficiency. The restaurant opens at 7pm, and doesn’t close until 2am.
In short: The Laughing Heart isn’t simply for hipster dining. It is, quite nakedly, for hipster romance. Small for intimacy; low-lit for seduction; and the food light and quick, just in case – well, just in case you and your companion have somewhere you wish to go on to.
I don’t want to exaggerate. It isn’t some kind of put rid sex den. Nor is it a moon-eyed festival of twee, where everyday is Valentine’ s. A moustachioed ma nina frilly shirt won’t sidle up to your table between courses while droning sensually on a violin. You could have a perfectly good time at The Laughing Heart without even the faintest hint of boot y on your mind. You could just come for the food. And the food, for the most part, is pretty good.
The menu is made up of sharing plates. (Every week I say this is now so common that it goes without saying, but t hen I say it any way.) The dishes change daily, but there’ s always a strong Far Eastern influence.
For example, on t he night I went, take the smoked-mackerel and horseradish in ari(a type of sushi served in a pocket of fried tofu). It tasted all right, but each piece fell apart in my fingers like damp tissue. It would have helped if they’d been smaller; they were too big to eat in a single go, but too crumbly to cut up. Then t here was cod’s roe with furikake (a Japanese seasoning) ‘and crudités ’.( This is by the by, but I can’ t believe that in the year 2017, a British restaurant can still, with a straight face, use the word ‘crudités’. They’ re chopped raw vegetables. Call them chopped raw vegetables. I know it takes up more space, but it ’ll make you sound a lot les s like a 1980s dinner-party hostess played by Patricia Routledge.)
The weakest dish, by far, was grilled pa kc hoi. It slumped on the plate, shrivelled and forlorn, looking as if it had just heard its dog had died. Chew i ng it was lab or ious, a nd my friend soon abandoned the effort.
Some of the other food, though, was terrific. In particular, the lamb heart in chapatti: delicious slithering pouches of meat and mint. Even better, the glisteningly succulent little row of miniature bavette steaks, each oozing with a sumptuous salty pat of melting butter.
Earlier I mentioned the speed of the chefs. The point bears repeating, because it was impressive. We arrived at 9.15pm. By 9.45, we’d been served six dishes. Half an hour. In some places, they’d barely have brought our drinks.
The pudding s were great. A gorgeous slice of pecan ta rt, both treacly and light at the same time. Then cooked cream, blood orange and pistachio. Lovely, although the colour was slightly disconcerting: a livid, throbbing red, with an almost radioactive glow. It looked like a tiny dying sun. Albeit one made of cream, and therefore a little bit less dangerous.
I liked The Laughing Heart. Not brilliant for vegetarians. But otherwise, in flashes, good. It deserves to be fashionable. No pipettes of organically refined rainwater, but you can’t have everything.