An ever-changing, reassuringly brief menu that is challenging without losing its cool
Being cool is a complex, multi-faceted thing. I wrote a fortnight ago about Neptune in Bloomsbury, a restaurant posited as the capital’s newest, coolest, prettiest place to be tagged on Instagram while picking at eel carpaccio. Bright, meanwhile, in London Fields, is also very cool, but a completely different subsection. Bright is chef-scene, actual “foodie” cool. It is a stripped-back, semi-industrial, chicken liver agnolotti and bull’s heart tomatoes with marjoram type of cool. It’s a place hewn by young men – Liam Kelleher, Phil Bracey and William Gleave – with the kind of hospitality pedigrees that cause earnest food bloggers to clutch their faces like rapt Victorian cherubs.
I love scrutinising the murky world of London restaurant hype, because nothing is more likely to make a man called Brian from Congleton bash out: “I don’t bloody care what London people think is cool! I just want my dinner,” on his 14-inch Dell Latitude. But Brian, these things do matter. By this time next year, you’ll be knee-deep in replicants of Bright’s katsu sando – panko’d pork cutlet and shredded cabbage between slices of white bread with a dollop of hot mustard.
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