The lower end of London’s Kingsland Road pulsates to the frenetic rhythm that Shoreditch has long set. During the day, throngs of athleisured Aussies stomp the stretch of road – coffee in one hand and a cheese plant from Columbia Road Flower Market in the other. As the sun slants behind Shoreditch Church, bars pull out their awnings and the footfall from the Chelmsford to London Liverpool Street train makes its way in. A new, bottle green-exteriored resident has drawn Pilates princesses, bottomless brunchers, and construction workers to peer into the stillness behind its white linen café curtains.
Welcome to Bar Valette. Here, Isaac McHale (of two Michelin-starred restaurant The Clove Club) hopes to cultivate a space for breezy Basque-inflected cooking. It’s a culinary journey that takes diners via his love of Nice and Monaco too – cutting through the din of the busy bus route outside with folksy plates of food made with well-sourced ingredients. Instead of car fumes and London gloom, the salt winds of the Bay of Biscay and the warmth of a San Sebastian grill await. Inside, the walls are Cornish clay, whitewashed brick and adorned with jars of chickpeas and chunky white asparagus. Tables are dressed simply with paper tablecloths and doilies. There are four counter seats from which to watch the cooking, with the day’s desserts, wedges of Comte and a mountainous plate of mushrooms also sitting countertop. Four seats also peer out into the street, if you’re not up for suspending belief.
Our server for the evening introduces himself, apologising that McHale is not present but confidently steering the start of our trip with a salty, nutty slosh of manzanilla sherry.
Should arteries allow, there’s a delightfully beige but bold series of fried snacks: one-pop devilled crab tarts in allegiance with long-standing San Seb restaurant Ganbara’s spider crab tarts – instead using British brown crab meat and English devilled spices. Barbajuans – a Monégasque fried ravioli stuffed with chard and ricotta that glow green through their diaphanous crust. And clapshot croquettes for a Scottish take on tapas. A heap of crispy fried Torbay prawns were crunched shells and all after dunking in pots of aioli that we requested multiple top-ups of.
Next came monkey fists of kale with a lively swipe of anchovy sauce. A jar of white asparagus was relieved of its decor duties and put to bed in a blanket of white sauce, capers and feathery chervil – something to no doubt take up residency in your front teeth. The mains included a grilled smoked trout on citrus hollandaise – a much-needed moment of zing – and a hefty dry-aged pork chop smothered in honey, fennel and a smoked paprika glaze that cut through the oceanic crusts of fat. We soldiered on to dessert, choosing the cinnamony gâteau Basque with stripes of mincemeat and pastry cream.
London has experienced a strong but nebulous cultural current for Spanish and French country cooking. Around the corner are Brat’s roaring grills and five miles up the road, the British chippy-turned-pintxos-bar Tollington’s is spinning out celestial plates of ‘chips bravas’, while Soho still percolates with Barrafina’s oozy Spanish tortillas. Bar Valette is a sensual, scenic road trip, picking up overlooked dishes, traditions and flavours in abundance. It sits at the pricier end of those offerings: despite the informal, unfussy beat its menu and aesthetic proclaim, the prawns are £27, the pork chop £48. But if you keep to the freer spirit and coastal rhythm of life that the places it takes inspiration from exult, you can rail the fried snacks and oscillate from a British cider to a Jerez sherry relatively affordably – enjoying the feeling that the promenade is just as close as the 243 to Waterloo awaiting you on the restaurant’s doorstep.
