Visitor tips for guests. Links take you to Google Maps. I recommend saving places.
- cafés
- bars
- restaurants
- places to work that are open late
- culture / entertainment
- Dalston
- Angel
- Broadway Market
- exercise
- shops
Cafés
Cutest for coffee: moko made (above) or Paper and Cup
moko made is wonderfully eccentric, and has great and very reasonably-priced Japanese food. Paper and Cup is also cute but further away.
Best for weekday breakfast: Curio Cabal
Try their Mexican eggs.
Best for weekend brunch: Towpath (above) or Friends of Ours
Towpath is on the canal, and so closed during winter (they have a free closing party every year with a bonfire and fireworks). Friends of Ours has great food but is on the expensive side.
Best view: Toconoco (above)
Although moko made has better food.
Most hipsterish: SHED (above)
Neon-lit basement gallery coworking space, yeah?
Best for enormous sandwiches: Fabriqué
I met Nimrod Kamer here.
Bars
(closest first)
TT Liquor (above)
Liquor store in the front. Restored 1920’s cinema in the back. Converted Victorian prison in the basement.
Basement cocktail place.
Callooh Callay (above)
The only place I know that has a hidden bar inside a hidden bar inside a bar (go through the wardrobe and then up the stairs).
Book in advance.
More in Dalston (below).
Restaurants
BRAT (above)
Supposed to be one of the best restaurants in London at the moment. They accept walk-ins for places at the bar, but if you want a table you have to book a week in advance. If you don’t get in, Smoking Goat, downstairs, is also good.
A more accessible version of BRAT.
CUB (What is it with hipsters and all-caps?)
Gourmet vegan place. Associated with the legendary Super Lyan cocktail bar, next door, which is currently getting refurbished.
Gloria (above)
1950’s-style Italian place. Ludicrously popular. They don’t accept booking Fri / Sat evening, so turn up at 6 p.m. if you want to get a table.
There are a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants all clustered together on Kingsland Road. I haven’t tried them all, but the best-reviewed are Green Papaya and Hanoi Café.
There’s also Dishoom is you like queuing.
More in Broadway Market (below).
Places to work that are open late
(closest first)
You can work on your laptop here until 11 p.m.
Ace Hotel (above)
Also the only place you can get coffee at 6:30 a.m. Laptop table in the centre. Usually packed.
The Hoxton (above)
Café’s great. Bar is okay. Restaurant’s awful. Workspaces to the left.
Non-hotel guests can work here until 11 p.m. Considerably quieter than the Ace Hotel or the Hoxton. Go up the stairs.
If you’re a member there’s also Shoreditch House and a bunch of branches of WeWork.
Culture / Entertainment
Gin House Burlesque (above) is on the doorstep.
There’s the Columbia Road Flower Market on Sunday, which is next to Nelly Duff gallery.
There are a bunch of galleries in the area, including Rivington Place (above) and Peer.
There’s also a ton of street art (e.g. above). Here’s a great guide.
XOYO nightclub is walkable.
More in Dalston and Broadway Market (below).
Dalston
Dalston is 10 mins North by bus, or 20 mins by foot. Clustered together are:
Café OTO (above)
Internationally-famous avant-garde music venue. (I was once at a dinner with a bunch of Italian musicians and artists, and discovered that all of them had been to Café OTO apart from me.)
Dalston Eastern Curve Garden (above)
And the bars: Brilliant Corners, Three Sheets, and Untitled (too cool to have a name).
Angel
You can walk along Regent’s Canal (above) to Angel, where you have a bunch of great restaurants along Camden Passage: Katsute 100, Brother Marcus, Sushi Show, and Oldroyd.
You can even keep on walking all the way to the newly-developed King’s Cross, where you have the German Gymnasium, Spiritland, the Everyman Cinema, and Coal Drops Yard (above).
Broadway Market
If you walk along the canal in the other direction (i.e. East) you get to Broadway Market (above), open on Saturdays, where you can all kinds of street food. It’s still worth visiting during the rest of the week for Kansas Smitty’s jazz bar, Buen Ayre restaurant, and Climpson & Sons café.
A little further in that direction are the Netil360 bar, Wringer & Mangle restaurant, and the E5 Bakehouse café.
Exercise
I go to Momentum, a CrossFit place just the other side of the canal, and Tempo Pilates in Shoreditch (they have another branch in Hackney).
Yoga-wise, there’s TripSpace, For the Core, and the intriguing-looking ChromaYoga (above).
You can also run along the canal, to Angel or Victoria Park. Just don’t go at rush hour as you’ll be competing with commuter wankers on bikes.
Shops
Locally there’s Sainsbury’s (better) and Tesco’s (worse).
For organic / health food there’s Hoxton Fruit & Veg and The Grocery (the latter is also a wine shop).
There’s a large oriental supermarket nearby.
If you walk along the canal to Angel there’s a big Sainsbury’s and a Waitrose.
If you walk along the canal in the opposite direction there’s L’eau à la bouche (above), a French delicatessen which is great for cheese.
