Tavern
374-378 Old Street, EC1
Meal for two about £230
Tavern. An inviting word that conjures visions of frothing tankards, merriment and a ripple of debauchery. Visit the website of this new Shoreditch bistro and you’ll be greeted by a Dutch Golden Age painting: nuns and babies sit cheek-by-jowl with free-flowing wine, children smoking pipes, and a dog waiting patiently for a kind hand or clumsy spillage. Down in Tavern’s loos, each cubicle is crowned with a panel from Hogarth’s cautionary tale, A Rake’s Progress.
Tavern’s interiors promise a refined take on these scenes of excess. It’s a high-ceilinged, monochrome vision of candlelit tables. Tools and tankards hang from hooks, patterned plates adorn the walls, and jars of pickled veg sit on shelves. But I knew it would look good. Tavern is a more casual sibling to Restaurant St Barts, a tastefully designed tasting menu spot.
The Clash play as I walk in and I notice the scuffed concrete floor has been splashed with forest green paint, lending an artfully imperfect edge to the room. Both the logo on the Victorian lantern outside and the slips of greaseproof paper that snacks arrive on are stamped in a typeface that wouldn’t look out of place on the back of the T-shirts I used to sell for metal bands at the Old Blue Last. I approve, but the rock ’n’ roll vibe isn’t for everyone. As I slip into a short-and-sharp pickleback martini — complete with a salami and cornichon gilda — I enjoy overhearing someone being berated by her mother for getting another tattoo (we’ve all been there).
Chunion Puffs are wonders of molten cheese and onion
The menu has a rebellious streak of its own. Another of the aperitifs is a bright-orange carrot gimlet that pops against the surroundings. It’s the ideal companion to the first of our snacks — crispy strips of pig skin, which explode out of a metal tankard like a bunch of tulips stretching for the sun. The accompanying smoked cod’s roe dip is a delight, as is a pair of “Chunion Puffs”, which are polished, one-bite wonders of molten cheese and onion.
A small plate of firm asparagus with sunshine-yellow brown butter hollandaise is spring on a plate, seasoned by a dusting of cured St Ewe egg yolk. A prettily presented hogget kofta arrives with fermented chilli and daintily piped wild garlic purée, white wild-garlic flowers clinging on. A baked Barra scallop with cobnut XO is a near miss — wonderfully nutty but lacking the tickle of heat or dried-scallop umami you’d expect from XO. And £14 for one small scallop feels steep.
Heat comes instead via a genius pork and cuttlefish sausage, accompanied by ribbons of sauerkraut and a quenelle of dark mustard, made in-house with the skins of red grapes. They should sell the stuff by the jar. A minerally Mount Etna white — £12.50 a glass — is a match for the sausage. Larger dishes include turbot with a sauce of laverbread and cockles (good, but pricey at £42 for just a couple of bites each) and tandoori-style quail, which we’re encouraged to eat with our hands.
As with many small-plates concepts, each dish “comes when it’s ready”, which in this case means that after the initial burst of snacks, there are some longer gaps, leading the meal to sag in the middle. The only occupied tables are tucked around a corner from the open kitchen. Perhaps it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind, because service all but disappears just as there’s an unhelpful dip in the soundtrack. Wild Horses lumbers in the background as we wait for our plates to be cleared. The same Talking Heads song is played twice in an hour. Small details, but cumulatively they suck energy out of what looked set to be a lively long lunch.
But then Laura Branigan’s Gloria arrives alongside a dainty cut-crystal glass of Fernet-Branca and two perfect puddings. One’s a metal coupe of silky lemon and yoghurt sorbet topped with sculptural shards of mint meringue. The other an impossibly glossy wedge of panela custard tart coated in fresh nutmeg. Suddenly I’m beaming again.
Just Can’t Get Enough by Depeche Mode plays as we leave. I wouldn’t go that far, yet. It’s early days, and just a few more guests and an extra chef behind the pass will make this place sing like its sausage.
What you say
Steffi Daydreamer: “We ate very well — not surprised as this new bistro is from the team behind one of my favourites, @restaurantstbarts. Loved all the starters: oysters, fired bread with wild garlic, and smoked cod’s roe with crisp pig skin to start with.”
Lulu: “Great selection. Some items on the menu were definitely tastier than others, eg the bread and mushrooms. The ventilation isn’t the best with the open-fire kitchen, it got quite smoky. Staff are lovely, friendly and service is great.”
This Time Last Week: “We liked our carrot juice with a shot of vodka at Tavern London.”
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