Post-hipster life in Brooklynesque EC2

TABLE FOR TWO Shoreditch is no joke any more, but Kathryn Flett’s lunch is still a feast of fun LEROY £ 140 8/ 10

Many years ago, long before Shoreditch became shorthand for hipsterdom – and before all the remaining hipsters moved to Margate – I’m not sure the area was even called Shoreditch.

Technically it was, of course. However, back in the early Eighties, on those occasions when young west Londoners such as myself ventured past the dragonlands of Clerkenwell in order to attend some wilfully edgy/scuzzy one-nighter club event (precursor of the “pop-up”) in a damp basement or windowless upper floor of a warehouse with challenging electrical arrangements and no safety exits, the area was simply known as “Y’know, near Old Street Roundabout?” A place where no cabs ever came and the night buses were driven by the Grim Reaper, if not drawn by horses.

The whole EC2/ E1/ N1 triangle is long post-satire; Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris’s prescient Channel 4 sitcom Nathan Barley aired nearly 14 years ago. If “Near Old Street, yeah?” was already a laughing matter in 2005, then what on earth is it now?

Well, let’s take a look at the stats. At the time of writing, the average asking price of the properties for sale in EC2A is £988,909, while there is an ordinary-looking one-bedroom flat to rent in Phipp Street for £1,668pcm. Such a high fixed cost base may or may not preclude residents from regularly visiting their local restaurant – not entirely coincidentally, also this column’s lunch destination – the newly Michelin-starred Leroy, also in Phipp Street.

On the subject of which, even GQ magazine can go a little Barley when off the leash in EC2A: “Imagine stumbling into LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy’s house, but that house is in Shoreditch and it’s actually a functioning restaurant and James Murphy isn’t actually there at all…” went the magazine’s online review of Leroy.

Murphy may not have been there, but my guest Jason H was. The fact that Jason has co-written a book called The Ladybird Book of The Hipster had nothing whatsoever to do with my casting him as the ideal EC2 lunch date – absolutely not, no.

Still, it couldn’t hurt; he might be able to reminisce about the days when EC2 was awash with men who were “childless, unaccountably wealthy and always well turned out” instead of the Brooklynesque EC2 of today, heaving with untucked hedge-funders and bridge-and-tunnel restaurant critics.

Jason asked for a Bloody Mary but, astonishingly, they had no tomato juice, so it was off to a flying g start with a pair of V&TS.

We shared everything: a plate of good mixed charcuterie to start, tart, then “Christian Parra” boudin din noir, pomme purée and waatercress on toast (EC2A likes s toast), in which, although h the black pudding appeared to have crashed from a differ- ent dish – “Bonnie Langford d in The Elephant Man,” said Jason ason – everything else harmonised sed very well.

We also had burrata, black olive and charred hispi, and both swooned over the velvety burrata.

I ordered a glass of wine. Jason had a beer. Did we have pumpkin, chestnuts and variegated kale? We certainly discussed variegated kale: was it twotone? Was it striped? Is a whitewall tyre variegated? Is a zebra a variegated horse? Meanwhile, we had the brill understudying for cod, with mussels, dodging the chicory, walnut and Ossau-iraty salad just in time to see next door’s plate of pale leaves and cheesy shreds, which I decried as “girls’ food” as though I was an octogenarian dining in the House of Lords circa 1950, instead of a 50-something who once had breakfast with David Bowie.

Beyond that, I’m afraid we can’t remember much – and I have checked with Jason – other than that the cheeseboard was astoundingly good, too, especially the 48-month-aged gouda, and a gorgonzola declared by Jason to be “the Tunnock’s teacake of cheeses” – though I would have preferred crackers to bread. Oh, and the room is triangular and white and woody and thoroughly easygoing and thus, for all I know, exactly like LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy’s house. “Oh, go on, have another beer, Jason. And look, everybody’s gone and, bless them, the staff are sitting down to eat their lunch…”

We never got as far as coffee, on the grounds that it seemed mean to interrupt the staff, who had clearly been quite brilliantly unobtrusive, or we migh might have noticed earlier than we did that they’d finished service. It was £140 (including service) for our lunch at Ler Leroy and, while you could probably do it for a lot less, you may not have any anywhere near as much fun – though Ir I recommend that you try.

Which seems an altogether seemly m moment for this column to clock off fo for the year. We look forward to seeing you on the other side, suitably refreshed.

‘We never got as far as coffee, on the grounds that it seemed mean to interrupt the staff’