Two Lights, London: 'The more I ate, the less convinced I was’ - restaurant review | Grace Dent

This is a dinner that educates me, rather than one that makes me drool

If you follow the restaurant scene on Instagram, you’ll possibly think of Two Lights in Shoreditch as “the fishtail hanging out of a sandwich place”. All restaurants in 2018 must have a dish to provoke Instagram users. I don’t make these rules; I am but a conduit. You may recall Red Farm’s Pac-Man dumplings or Kerridge’s Bar & Grill’s lobster omelette. And it is reported that at new Notting Hill mega-opening Caractere, Emily Roux is agitating – excuse me, enticing – diners with a Bourbon biscuit filled with mushed sardine butter. This, let’s be frank, sounds like something one might have been tricked to eat while blindfolded at an 1990s children’s birthday party.

Hence, at Two Lights, a small, breaded sardine lies between two slices of purposefully bog-standard white bread, with its wispy tail draping out à la Tom & Jerry’s supper. It’s a sardine katsu sandwich for £4.50, a play on Japanese junk food. In the maze of morality that is food-scene cultural appropriation, a loophole allows the Japanese to play with the drab 70s British way of making a sandwich and flog it back to us via Shoreditch.

Grace Dent’s restaurant reviews appear in the award-winning food magazine Feast, along with recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi and more top cooks, with the Guardian every Saturday.