The Duke of Richmond, Hackney: ‘Nothing prissy or mannered here’ – restaurant review

Any kitchen that has a crab chip butty and suckling pig on the menu is fine by Jay Rayner. This is what happens when a super-talented chef takes over a local boozer

The Duke of Richmond, 316 Queensbridge Road, London E8 3NH (020 7923 3990). Meal for two, including drinks and service £70-£110

You have to admire the luscious, greedy, thigh-rubbing instincts of a kitchen that puts a crab chip butty on the menu: a palm-sized, golden-glazed bun, filled with mayonnaise-bound white crabmeat, the crunch of lightly pickled samphire and, finally, a fistful of still hot, still crisp chips. The best food items are mindfulness incarnate. They stop you dwelling gloomily on what you haven’t done today or what you should be doing tomorrow or the size of your thighs or what you could do to Jeremy Hunt if only you had a box of wasps and a bucket of honey. They silence all those thoughts, even the interesting ones about Jeremy Hunt, and make you focus on the thing you’re eating. The crab chip butty at the Duke of Richmond pub is one of those items.