Finding new Dalston restaurant A Little of What You Fancy is a bit of a challenge.
It hides in plain sight on the Kingsland Road, blending in beside 'Angel's beauty and slimming clinic', a unisex hair salon and an off-licence cum mini-market. It's difficult to find because it doesn't have a sign. A chalkboard near the street is the only indication that this is the right place, which with a smeared scrawl, announces the restaurant's name. This is either a stroke of marketing genius or a mis-judged attempt at projecting an underground image.
Inside it's stripped down, yet homely, with crates of eggs and lemons sitting around, a drafty toilet and reclaimed school chairs. It's packed with loud and chatty people, uniformed with undercuts and boat shoes for the boys, artfully dishevelled hair and baggy jumpers for the girls - a typical Dalston crowd.
But the prices are not Dalston prices. You could feed a whole family at Huong-Viet, just a few blocks down the road, for the price of three-course meal here. I suspect that A Little of What You Fancy is aiming to pull in the second wave of Dalston dwellers. The ones who came because they liked the edgy, vibrant area, and could afford the inflated rents. The ones who work in the City by day, but want to feel quite bohemian of an evening.
The ones who would love, in other words, to go to a dishevelled, word-of-mouth restaurant on the Kingsland Road and be served with potted shrimp and confit duck. Maybe that lack of a sign really is a cunning idea. Then again - it wasn't the only absent aspect of the evening.
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk
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