Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in London Dalston
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Dalston restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 18 restaurants in Dalston and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Dalston restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Dalston Restaurants
1. Angelina
Fusion restaurant in Hackney
56 Dalston Lane - E8
“Every time is a different experience thanks to the ever changing menu” at this “imaginative and wonderful” Dalston venture. “The food really is a mix of European and Japanese influences” and served in a tasting menu format (either the 10-course ‘kaiseki’ or 4-course ‘omakase’) that’s “excellent, without feeling too fussy, and great value for money”. The “dark and moody interior” creates a “pared-back but buzzy atmosphere, which makes this a perfect pick for a special dinner”.
2. Little Duck The Picklery
British, Modern restaurant in Dalston
68 Dalston Lane - E8
2021 Review: A short stroll from Hackney Downs station, this year-old sibling to Ducksoup operates as a ‘fermenting kitchen and eatery’ (and you can buy the results by the gram or bottled as part of their The Picklery range). It also operates as a kitchen from breakfast on, serving a short menu, which varies throughout the day (you might have squid risotto, or steak in the evening); and it’s later in the day that its “great list of natural wines” comes to the fore. “It feels very relaxed, serves lots of pickled stuff and the food’s all good: it’s a bit like going around to a friend’s house, who’s a very good cook and has a lot of very nice wine”.
3. Snackbar
Sandwiches, cakes, etc restaurant in Hackney
Farm:Shop, 20 Dalston Lane - E8
2021 Review: ‘Pickled’ author Freddie Janssen launched a Kickstarter campaign for this new, August 2019 venture in hip Dalston – an all-day café sitting alongside a co-working space and urban farm, and delivering a funky-sounding menu which reads like a ‘pick ’n’ mix’ of global inspiration.
4. The Duke of Richmond Public House & Dining Room
British, Modern restaurant in Hackney
316 Queensbridge Road - E8
“Delicious food” and “attentive service” are the order of the day at this ambitious gastropub on the Dalston-Haggerston border, where the kitchen is headed by chef Tom Oldroyd, whose self-named restaurant in Islington closed down during the pandemic.
5. Mildreds
Vegetarian restaurant in Dalston
1 Dalston Square - E8
“So much better now it is fully vegan and more adventurous with its food” (“a wonderful range of plant-based dishes from around the world including Central America and the Middle East”) – this long-established meat-free chain started with its “old favourite” Soho branch (est 1988) and has mushroomed in recent years to include five locations in all. “Tables are crammed in” and the sites can get “extremely busy”, but its offering is reliably “tasty and interesting”.
6. Attawa
Indian restaurant in Dalston
6 Kingsland High Street - E8
2023 Review: This Dalston two-year-old from MasterChef: The Professionals 2019 semi-finalist Arbinder Dugal is a “very solid representative of the by-now-not-quite-so-new wave of modern Indian restaurants – probably the best in this part of town”. Named after the owners’ home village in the Punjab, it serves a short menu of tasty north Indian dishes.
7. The Dusty Knuckle
Sandwiches, cakes, etc restaurant in Dalston
Car Park, Abbot Street - E8
“Down a classic dodgy Dalston alleyway, this beautiful place awaits!” (there’s also an offshoot in Green Lanes, Haringey). “I love the good old Dusty Knuckle”, which inspires affection not just for its “absolutely top bread, pastries and sarnies” plus “excellent coffee”; but also for its social enterprise role supporting at-risk young East Londoners.
8. Jones & Sons
British, Modern restaurant in Stoke Newington
Stamford Works, 3 Gillett Street - N16
“Deservedly something of a local institution” – this industrial-style restaurant and grill “manages to provide a cut-above dining experience while retaining a low-key Hackney vibe” – making it the perfect location for the 2021 film Boiling Point, which was spun out into a BBC TV series in 2023.
9. Chick 'n' Sours
Chicken restaurant in Dalston
390 Kingsland Rd - E8
“Full marks” say fans of the fried-chicken burgers, sarnies and other crispy poultry treats at these Haggerston and Covent Garden pit-stops. Order 48 hours in advance and you can enjoy the ‘Whole Fry’ – at £35 it’s their ‘iconic whole fried chicken’ with two sides and the dressing of your choice…
10. Casa Fofó
International restaurant in Hackney
158 Sandringham Road - E8
“The depth of flavour which Adolfo brings out in his ever-changing menus means we visit at least once or sometimes twice a month: nowhere else would we ever dream of doing the same!” – Adolfo de Cecco’s Hackney shop-conversion is “always a pleasure for its inventive dishes”, which meld Asian influences with European ingredients into an intriguing and individual culinary mashup. At any one time, there is a single tasting option, and he “manages to maintain high standards with each iteration”. “The front room is arguably more dull than the very light rear area, which is a sort of conservatory. And there are interesting choices of music at low levels”.
11. Le Bab at Kraft Dalston
Middle Eastern restaurant in Dalston
Kingsland Locke, 130 Kingsland High Street - E8
“Tasty kebabs and sides” that “offer a modern twist on traditional Middle Eastern cuisine” make this “brilliant” Carnaby Street outfit “a must-visit”, “in the lovely setting of Kingly Court”. The Battersea branch is “an absolute gem”, and there are now half a dozen outlets around town, including at the Market Halls in Oxford Street and Canary Wharf. See also Kebab Queen.
12. Hackney Coterie
British, Modern restaurant in Hackney
230b Dalston Lane - E8
2023 Review: “Great value and unusual tasting menus, nice wines & lovely service” win all-round applause for this yearling in a Hackney Downs warehouse from Anthony Lyon (of Lyon’s in Crouch End). Head chef Giuseppe Pepe (ex-Pidgin and Marksman) is responsible for the seasonal, minimal-waste menu, and his “food is beautifully presented and served”.
13. Mangal 2
Turkish restaurant in Stoke Newington
4 Stoke Newington Rd - N16
2023 Review: “Mangal 2 has reinvented itself during the pandemic” with Ferhat and Sertaç Dirik (the sons of the founder), “transforming it from its previous incarnation as just another of one of the (good!) pile-’em-high Turkish restaurants on the Dalston/Stoke Newington strip into a totally new venue: still Turkish, but more small plates now than giant platters”. All reports agree it’s a successful switch, “standing on a solid par with the other good small-plates-and-wine joints around Hackney, while still doing something quite different”. “The noisy room is a little Spartan, but the exciting and interesting food transports you” – “the Turkish influence is not that obvious” but the menu delivers “good ingredients very well cooked” (although “the wine list is a bit too natural, with no other conventional options)”.
14. EartH Kitchen
British, Modern restaurant in Hackney
11-17 Stoke Newington Road - N16
2021 Review: “Try and snag a corner banquette for great E8 people-watching” if you visit this quirky venue – the dining room of a Dalston (technically speaking Shacklewell) events venue where ex-St John chef Chris Gillard delivers some excellent, gutsy dishes. On nights when the venue has a noisy gig though, it can fall down as a foodie experience: “they need to decide if they’re a bar and disco, or a restaurant, because diners don’t want both at once: the waiters were sidetracked mixing cocktails and the DJ an irritant”.
15. Lardo
Italian restaurant in Hackney
197-201 Richmond Rd - E8
2021 Review: This “buzzy”, well-known Italian (in the Arthaus building near London Fields) continues to inspire relatively limited feedback. Pizza is the most popular option foodwise, and reports say it “ticks all the boxes” for a good time. Its sibling Lardo Bebe is no more.
16. Acme Fire Cult
BBQ restaurant in Hackney
The Bootyard, Abbot Street - E8
“Don’t be put off by what looks like a dodgy side street to get there”, say fans of Andrew Clarke and Daniel Watkins’s Dalston BBQ, who say that the “great food cooked with fire and flames” (and served “in the classic small plates style”) justifies eating “in a tent! in January!” (“you get blankets… it’s worth it and fun”). And there’s “amazing vegetarian options as well as the fish and meat”. But other diners in our annual poll are less sure. “Haphazard” or “too-cool-for-school” service is a recurrent theme. And overall ratings were dragged down by the minority who found the food itself to be “a real let down” (“considering everything is prepared over coals, it was not the charry interesting place we’d heard of, in fact somewhat bland”).
17. mu
Japanese restaurant in Dalston
432-434 Kingsland Road - E8
On a site that was Rotorino (RIP), this year-old music venue (named for a jazz album) is from the brothers behind Hackney’s ‘Brilliant Corners’. It has yet to generate much in the way of survey feedback, but London needs more jazz diners; and its Japanese-inspired robata cuisine received a big shout out from the Guardian’s Grace Dent in November 2022, who found it be “far grander and ornately executed than it needs to be”.
18. Marquee Moon
restaurant in Hackney
48 Stoke Newington Road - N16
An old Dalston boozer, the Marquis of Lansdowne, has been revamped with Art Deco-inspired interiors as a restaurant and 'listening bar' with a late licence by the team behind Docklands nightclub The Cause. The menu features British pub classics combined with Southeast Asian influences – think Thai-style sausages and mash.
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