We were already fans of eating dinner at the Hill & Szrok cookshop and restaurant in Broadway Market. Our only complaint was that they weren’t open for weekday lunches so we are delighted that the same team have opened a pub in Old Street (formerly The Three Crowns) which serves food all day. We started off with white port and tonic which is such a brilliant drink one slightly wonders why it isn’t served more widely. From the list of starters priced at £6 each, we tried wonderfully rich pork rillette with pickles and toast; a plate of top notch merguez sausages and chargrilled sprouting broccoli served with chopped almonds and dandelion leaves.
There seems to be no end of places to eat a delicious steak in London at the moment, so we thought we would try the pork chop here for our main course instead. This is a substantial piece of meat for £8.50, which comes with excellent chips. Accompanying the chips was a homemade ketchup seasoned with five spice powder which we didn’t feel totally worked, but this misfiring doesn’t feel very serious when the ketchup can easily be ignored and also, prices are so low. There was also a very good salad of castel franco leaves and fennel. Pudding probably wasn’t a necessity and missing out on the much-lauded rice pudding didn’t feel like a hardship – it’s a dish that has been pretty much ruined for us by school dinners. The dense vanilla cheesecake that was on offer proved harder to pass up. We’ll be back.
