Ink, Bow, E2 – a bit of a damp squid

Look, I’m all in favour of local eateries going a bit gourmet. In East London, where I live, excellent restaurants are springing up by their dozen, frequented by bearded foodies with a penchant for Aperol spritz (doesn’t anyone realise it tastes of petrol?)

So when our local pizza place Olive, set at the base of a modern housing behemoth on the banks of the Regents Canal near Mile End, changed hands and became Ink,  a Swedish inspired purveyor of haute cuisine, we were curious if not a little surprised. Incongruously located as it is amid affordable housing, it’s only easy to get to because we practically live on its doorstep.

We booked a table hoping for some early evening sun on the terrace that overlooks the canal, for a celebration of Tom’s new job, taking out my friend Natasha, who has steadfastly propped us up through thick and thin and treated us to a few meals when times were tough, as well as her newish other half.

But the thunderstorms that cracked over London throughout the afternoon rained a little on our parade, and were pathetic fallacy to the night ahead. Unable to get a table until 8.30 pm meant what little evening sun had crept round the housing blocks was all but gone by the time we turned up.

Tash was late, and the staff were genial enough about delaying our booking. We were warmly welcomed by a waiter who sported a beard ripe for flower plaiting (the new hipster trend) and a pouty host who immediately took a shine to my nothing if not metrosexual hubbie although as the night wore on (and I was on garrulous form, he rather seemed to resent the rest of us.)

The restaurant was stuffy, though not full when we arrived some 15 minutes late and the terrace waterlogged. Neutrally decorated with all the charm of a Hilton hotel lobby, the ambience, which could have been much improved by some fresh flowers, was dulled by the fact we were sat at a table where we could see neither the canal view nor the open kitchen.

The bone marrow starter that attracted Tash’s boyfriend was off the menu so he ordered crab with “textures of cucumber” at circa £9.50, which arrived prettily minuscule, while the rest of us ordered scallops and a bottle of rose that arrived not quite cold enough, while our jug of cucumbered tap water had no ice.

When our starters arrived, Tom’s was noticeably more attractive than either mine of Tash’s, with three rather than our two scallops apiece, and an additional scatter of watercress to give the otherwise mean looking dish, which, had attracted such rave reviews in Time Out, some colour. Livened only by a blob or two of something that was meant to be peach puree but tasted like sweet chilli sauce, and a sprinkling of pork scratchings that could have been finer ground -they chunked up and got stuck in your teeth- Tash and I pointed out the difference in presentation to the hirsute waiter which resulted in the plates going back to the kitchen, returning with singular micro cress leaf. It felt passive aggressive – we had been exceptionally good humoured about it, but perhaps the kitchen had simply run out of cress.

We tried to reserve judgement until the mains.

Tash and her boyfriend ordered the house specialty of salt cod was just that: salty; but my beef, potatoes and peas was tasty, substantial, if not a little like a good homemade stew at a tenth of the £15.50 I paid: the meat was tender and well cooked, but again, the portion was dainty.

Only Tom, who by now was openly flirting with the manager, really enjoyed his pork belly, which came attractively, though insubstantially presented.

Still hungry, and on our second bottle of rose, we ordered two deconstructed cheesecakes which came presented with a billow of dry ice. Introducing the puddings as “textures of milk” – a pudding I ate in its original incarnation at the spectacular Viajante when it was open in the renowned Bethnal Green Town Hall, and which was a genuine work of culinary genius created from actual textures of milk – iced, flaked smeared and drunk, rather than this somewhat poor relation: a cool, pleasant yoghuty posset pooled around a miserly helping of (locally foraged?) blackberry and a crumble of (digestive?) biscuit. 

Haute cuisine this is not, and in trying to create the sort of tasting menu that Vijante, now taken over by the Bethnal Green Town Hall’s acclaimed The Typing Room, made its specialty, Ink fails as much by misinterpreting the concept as by its inauspicious location.

 A tasting menu needs to have lots of spectacular little dishes as well as flamboyant service, rather than an attractive hipster serving three meager and slightly disappointing plates. Give me a decent local pizza parlour any day.

Tom, waived away the £170 bill with his black credit cad, a relic of his banking hey day, so that Tasha and her boyfriend, newly relocated back to Hackney after a break up, didn’t have to worry about the price. “It’s simply not good enough,” Tom said, despite his warm rapport with the manager, “to drag clients all the way from the city for a night out, and it’s too expensive not to be able to expense.”

We headed across the canal back to mine to drink Amaretto on ice and fill up on malted milk biscuits as the slugs glistened across the astrotruf of my tiny Tower Hamlets’ backyard.