Restaurants

By Charmaine Mok

Another month, another new coffee shop – and again, it’s the east Londoners who can rejoice. Wilton’s is the latest to join the growing list of good cafés in Hackney, from old-timers Climpson & Sons in Broadway Market to the more recent Taste of Bitter Love in Hackney Road.
Its location among the residential streets east of the Hackney Empire had us half-expecting to find Wilton’s with empty seats and cooling milk steamers. Yet, on a late weekend visit, the café was nicely filled with a mixture of solo sippers and rouged-up fashionistas.

The café has been conjured by David McHugh and Dominik Prosser of the Notting Hill Arts Club, and it’s a good-looking place with good-looking people. The design, by Broadway Market’s The Dog and Wardrobe, cleverly mixes materials such as corrugated steel and faded wood with cheerful rainbow-hued globe lampshades and streamlined cylindrical counter spaces. The fruit crates underneath the benches lining the room slide out, Ikea-esque, to become extra stools or tables.

The coffee is easy-drinking, with both a macchiato and flat white made perfectly agreeable with beans roasted by Climpson & Sons; the modest café menu features quality nosh for under £4 (sourdough toast, smoked mackerel salad, chorizo or Gloucester Old Spot sausage rolls) using ingredients from purveyors such as Brindisa and Neal’s Yard Dairy. Our avocado on sourdough toast with olive oil, spicy red pepper flakes and a wedge of lemon for squeezing looked stunning, but could have done with a touch more seasoning.

Soon, Wilton’s will play host to a digital radio station, London Fields Radio (www.londonfieldsradio.com), so stay tuned.

Time Out London Issue 2047: November 12-18 2009