“Nouveau-quality cooking, where the cool kids are.”
Last year I lived on the same street as Brat – a painfully trendy road in Shoreditch where a Versace boutique rubbed shoulders with “Pizza East”. Waifs and strays from Shoreditch house spilled noisily into the streets for vintage clothes and “artisan” coffee. You the know the type of place – one where you (alright, I) cannot not help but feel desperately uncool. When Brat opened at the end of my street I visited early on and had one of my favourite culinary experiences that year. I’ve been an accurate Michelin Star predictor in the past, and not long after I predicted it – they won a star – but unfortunately for me, lost the “unknown” status that had allowed me to walk in for lunch with no reservation on almost any day of the week. A year or so later, I’ve moved west, and Brat has moved outwards, expanding their empire with a long term pop up in Climpsons Arch, so well received that their residency has been extended until January.
After an unexpected break in an otherwise packed diary, I managed to get a table for Sunday Lunch, and headed east to Brat at Climpson’s Arch, joined by an East-London friend. The atmosphere at Brat sets a recurring theme for the restaurant experience as a whole – it s confident but not not boastful. They’ve done away with scanning QR coded menus – their low tech alternative (a menu on a chalkboard, which you take a photograph on your phone for reference, duh) is almost laughably simple, yet well considered – as per the the dishes themselves. You’ll be sitting on a plastic chair, beneath a corrugated roof, a prospect which in any other circumstance would seem uncomfortable – and yet… crab and steak sizzle on open fire, there’s the buzz of a busy, happy restaurant, and the moment the dishes start arriving, the world shrinks to just you and the steaming platefuls of brilliant cooking.
So I’m a big eater, and it was one of those menus which I felt I wouldn’t be doing justice to if I didn’t order a varied selection of dishes. The menu is loosely arranged first with smaller plates that arrive first, then larger main plates that are all great fro sharing.
We enjoyed:
Grilled anchovy bread: Something I remember as a standout from the original restaurant. A soft pillow of mallowy bread, topped with slithers of salty anchovy and speckled with chive. The bread is crispy and doughy in exactly the ratio you’d want. Simple to look at but interesting and extremely delicious to eat – needless to say, not a crumb was spared.
Young leeks and fresh cheese: A dreamy mound of buttery leeks with a smattering of crunch and a generous spoon of fresh cheese. The leeks are just on the right side of done – collapsed onto the plate having given up, and the cheese – a smooth burrata-esque blob, ads a delicious cooling fattyness to the dish.
Then arrived one of my two favourite plates of the day.
Grilled Clams, Velvet Crab, and Chorizo: Something so utterly satisfying that we would have easily had a plate each. The large platter arrived like an edible sunset – oranges and corals, purples and blacks, lazily heaped onto the plate. Broken crabs and the sweetest of clams are tossed with soft chorizo and plenty of fat – a new age surf and turf. This is really, really good stuff. It’s desperately wanting bread, so we quickly order some and get a thick toasted slice with some whipped butter and what I first assumed to be activated charcoal (it is indeed something even more obscure – burn onion powder that adds a welcome hint of seasoning to the butter. But back to the dish – God this is good. My dining partner and I begin a battle over who gets the most crab (I win, obviously). The pool of buttery, crabby, chorizo-y liquor at the bottom of the platter makes for the perfect accompaniment to a toasted crust. The chorizo is soft and giving, the crabs – small, fiddly, but worth the effort – are perfectly cooked. And the clams – open as if offering themselves to you, and as sweet and fresh as they come.
If I’d died at this point I would have been happy – but I’m glad I didn’t or I would have missed out on yet more fantastic dishes:
Anchovies, squid, kokoxtas, sage: The main portions here are generous – another platter, but this time of light and crispy batter, blanketing pearly squid, salty anchovy, kokoxtas and sage. I drenched in lemon and crunched my way through – reminded of the deliciously moreish Fritto Misto you find in Italy.
Then came the Smoked Potatoes: Blistered potato skins revealing soft and smoky potato, topped with plenty salt, fat, and chive (Imagine if I were a potato this is how I’d like to die.) These were so good that to call them a side would be an insult – they were instead a little dish in their own right (much like the anchovy bread).
Finally something so palate-pleasing that the mere memory conjures up whatever the opposite of PTSD is. “Duck Rice” – the most delicious rice dish I’ve had this year, by some margin. A dish that cannot be improved upon (other that they could of course, give you more of it). A soft and sticky rice makes the perfect nest for generous slices of fatty duck. An onion has melted in the middle and there is a softness, dare I say a sexyness, a femininity to this dish that is utterly irresistible. Unfortunately this was our last dish and despite my best efforts we couldn’t finish it, so I took home half in a doggy bag. The leftover rice I date cross legged on the sofa, straight from the tin foil it was wrapped in. It was somehow even more glorious cold the next day – the duck fat having congealed around the rice (a more delicious prospect than it perhaps sounds) and melted the moment it touched my tongue. Pure heaven – and a dish I highly recommend.
If you hadn’t noticed, this is a full fat full carb restaurant (hallelujah!) bringing old school pleasures to a new school environment. This restaurant is proud but not pretentious, a world of ideas and flavours crammed into a nook in Climpsons Arch. A quality-centric restaurant and a welcome addition to the East London scene, and what a stroke of luck in their choice of residence – an outdoor venue where you can gather with your friends unimpaired.
I liked this offshoot even better than the original, and it has produced one of my favourite meals this year. A cool space and a creative kitchen that over-delivers with every mouthful. The crab, chorizo and clams, and the duck rice are particularly good – both fatty, comforting, flavour packed plates – I’m glad I’ve got no idea how to cook either or it would be all I’d ever eat! This was a brave venture by the team at Brat, and one I’m very glad to have enjoyed – a must visit.
Sabrina Goodlife.