Hackney Pearl

If Bill Granger & Fergus Henderson put their heads together, they might dream up something similar to the Hackney Pearl. This welcoming café-bar, a hub for Hackney Wick’s artistic community, is part easy-going Aussie charm (flat white coffees, an appetite for brunch, sunny-natured staff & Anzac biscuits) & part British culinary cool (Aussie owner James Morgan is a St John alumnus). As a venue, it’s a work in progress – self-consciously so – that has developed organically from a former clothing factory. It’s somewhere to pop in for coffee & free Wi-Fi, or a bottle of interesting wine, but you can also settle in for three courses of proper tucker: perhaps poussin with bulgur & broccoli salad, duck leg & carrots, rounded off with Eton mess. The Hackney Pearl week is a busy one: there’s a quiz night on Monday, £10 specials on Tuesday & pizza on Wednesday.