Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

Shoreditch is the new Soho. There’s never been clearer evidence of this than the steady acquisition of chunks of Shoreditch by the Soho House Group, first with the construction of Shoreditch House private members’ club, then the more recent takeover of the Hoxton Grill inside the Hoxton Hotel.

Their latest place is Pizza East, in the big warehouse space that used to be the T Bar. The grimy entrance stairwell remains the same, complete with bouncer on the door. Inside it still looks much as it did before, namely like one floor of an old factory, but now there’s a bevy of smiling greeters to check your booking.

Despite the prosaic name, there’s a lot more than pizza on the menu. Shoreditch House, which is in the same building, also has an Italianate menu, and there’s some crossover of ingredients, such as the cured meats and cheeses. This menu’s designed for easy assembly though, with 170 seats to fill and booking times strictly regimented (arrive 15 minutes late at your peril).

There’s a recognisable Italian-American slant to many of the dishes, which is hardly surprising when you remember that Soho House has a branch in New York, and quite a few of the staff – including our charming, personable waitress are American. Clam pizza is a speciality of New England, and we were pleased to find that ours was not smeared in tomato sauce – in Italian cooking, mixing seafood and tomato is a no-no. Instead, our pizza was ‘white’, garnished with cherry tomatoes, garlic and pecorino. The base was thin, but puffed up around the edges from the heat of the gas-fired ovens (they also burn a few logs to add an appealing aroma).

Another New York influence is the range of small eats, which in New York are called cicchetti after the Venetian term for them; on this menu they’re simply called antipasti, though here they’re pretty large. Soft polenta topped with spiced and deep-fried chicken livers (yes, really) was a suitably autumnal dish, while chunks of fried calamari with a caper aioli was also substantial and comforting.

The desire to be on-trend has brought a few retrograde steps. One is the use of tumblers as wine glasses, which might look utility-chic, but they waste money spent on good wine as you can’t savour the aroma. (Some wines are even dispensed via bar taps.) Another minus point is low light and tiny type on buff-coloured menus: the young chap next to us had to resort ot using his mobile phone to illuminate the menu to make it legible.

Being Shoreditch and vast, this place is noisy. But the food’s good and the welcome friendly, so get on down – there are DJs on Thur-Sat evenings, so it’s a good place to get your evening off to a good start.

Time Out October 2008