BRAT, London E1 (Shoreditch): restaurant review

What’s the food like at BRAT?

Brat, slang for turbot – the much ordered and much Instagrammed star dish on the menu at this former Shoreditch strip bar – is grilled over an open wood fire grill to much dramatic effect, along with more prime ingredients.

We order the Cornish moorland beef chop after a hot tip – slices of ruby red meat with a darkly charred bark, come lined up like dominos, their border of gamey yellow fat almost better than the meat itself. Italian tomatoes, on the side, are simply quartered, seasoned and drenched in an olive oil so peppery it catches in your throat.

The rest of the menu follows the trend for sharing plates – small snacks up to giant platters. We regret not ordering the chopped egg salad with bottarga as we spot it on the pass, but a bouncy, blistered, pillow-soft grilled flatbread, topped with curls of salty anchovy fillets, a slick of oil and sprinkling of chives does the trick.

Sweet langoustines with earthy spikes of roasted rosemary are barely licked by the flames – still daringly see through. Spider crab, cabbage and fennel salad was refreshingly different – a careful dance between the sweet shellfish, brassica pepperiness and aniseed hit, lemon zest and chervil. Perhaps the most surprising, underdog dish of the night was a bowl of cockles, boldly served with a sharp, vinegary liver sauce, earthy, sweet – and (who knew?) the perfect partner for these salty little sea bursts.

Burnt cheesecake was granular and didn’t do it for us, but a Tomos classic, brown bread ice cream marbled with marmalade, was just right.

And to drink?

The wine list lives up to its promise, too – curated with the help of the cool gang at Noble Rot – there’s plenty for the chipper team to recommend, from supremely sippable sherries, to the grown-up Koehler-Ruprecht riesling trocken we consumed numerous glasses of.

See BRAT’s menu here.

Reviewed by Laura Rowe

Photo credit Ben McMahon