“I’m outside Jaguar Shoes,” read the message from my friend. I’d not received the like since 2008, back when the long-standing bar was a focal point of Shoreditch nightlife and I worked at nearby Catch serving indie-sleazesters poorly mixed G&Ts.
Catch is no longer with us but Jaguar Shoes survives and, next to it, the reason my millennial friend and I were back: Bar Valette, the new restaurant from Isaac McHale, whose Clove Club brought Michelin-starred cuisine to the postcode in 2013. “We were the first of the first,” McHale , “really moving London’s dining scene’s centre of gravity to the east.”
In the intervening years, a number of grown-up restaurants (Brat, Lyle’s, Manteca) have sustained that reputation, but Bar Valette, with its white tablecloths and southern French dishes, heralds something of a second wave for Shoreditch, as a host of upscale restaurants exorcise the ghosts of my generation’s winklepicker-and-footless-tights past.
Take The Knave of Clubs, which returns the 18th-century building that once housed the 2000s French restaurant Les Trois Garçons to its former pub status and original name. “It’s an absolutely gorgeous building and I think the opportunity to return a pub back to being a pub for the first time in 30 years is pretty rare,” says owner James Dye (also proprietor of the beloved Camberwell Arms). Above it? One Club Row, a restaurant that promises bar dining and old “New York-style hospitality”. Less bored bartenders with backcombed hair, more house pianist and piles of oysters.
A short stroll away on Curtain Road, you’ll find just-opened Tatar Bunar, a southern Ukrainian restaurant specialising in the classic, homely food of the Bessarabia region.
Established names are setting up in new developments in the area too, notably Sabor’s Nieves Barragan, who, come late summer, will open her latest Spanish venture, Legado.
Before then, get ready to reserve a spot at Singburi, the longed-for relaunch of the cult Leytonstone Thai restaurant that, before it closed last year, was regarded by those who could get a table as the best place to eat in the city. Put simply, “You don’t need to go to Soho anymore,” says Dye.
