BRAT, Shoreditch

Leica M3, Summicron 35mm F2 FP4 (400)

Brat, Two Ways

There are, it turns out, two Brats, which is a bit like discovering your favourite pub has a younger sibling who lives under a railway bridge and seems to be having more fun. The original, up its stairs on Redchurch Street, is the grown-up of the pair: wood-panelled, candlelit, faintly hushed, the sort of room where you instinctively lower your voice and sit up straight in case a headmaster appears. Its cousin at Climpson's Arch, tucked beside London Fields, is the sort of place where nobody would notice if you turned up in shorts, and where the ambience is supplied chiefly by the Overground thundering overhead every few minutes, causing the cutlery to tremble and conversation to pause like a congregation waiting for a late hymn. I’ve reviewed that one here as well.

The food is recognisably from the same family, in that both places are built around the eternal and deeply satisfying idea of setting fire to things and then eating them. In Shoreditch the cooking feels composed and a touch ceremonial, the turbot arriving with the gravity of a visiting dignitary. At the Arch it all feels looser and smokier, more like a very accomplished barbecue thrown by a friend who happens to be a far better cook than you will ever be, and who does not hold this against you. I ate things at both that made me close my eyes in a way that alarmed my dining companion, and I could not honestly tell you which plate was better, only that one was eaten in shirtsleeves and the other in a coat I never took off.

Which to choose depends, I think, on what sort of evening you are after. Shoreditch is for occasions: anniversaries, apologies, and the moment you need to convince someone you are more sophisticated than you are. Climpson's Arch is for a Saturday when the weather is behaving, the trains are running and you don't mind smelling faintly of woodsmoke on the bus home. Either way you will spend more than you meant to and regret none of it, which is about as much as anyone can ask of a restaurant, or indeed of life in general.