This neighbourhood joint doesn’t have our critic talking about it in her sleep yet - but she’s in love
First, the restaurant’s name, because names are very important: Jolene. It is, of course, also a song that’s the dictionary definition of “plaintive”, in which Dolly Parton nails the agony of having one’s life bulldozed, just for kicks, by a flame-haired supervixen. Jolene, I always sensed, was the type of woman who would pay little heed to Dolly’s beggin’ – the game was already over. And, 45 or so years on, this woman’s name still holds connotations of lost love and the inevitability that people will behave like garbage.
It is, therefore, a bold set of restaurateurs who would create a beautiful, candlelit space this close to Hackney with a bakery attached, and call it Jolene. That said, if I had to spend an evening listening to some claptrap excuse about why my man “talks about you in his sleep”, I’d want it to occur at a Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim and David Gingell restaurant. Try to break my heart on a Friday night at Westerns Laundry in Holloway, north London, their previous opening before Jolene, if you dare. That place is so damned affable, and Gingell’s rum baba so sensational, you could announce that you and Jolene were eloping to Bogotá, and I’d grunt, “Ooh, never mind, we got a Friday night table at Westerns.” Then I’d continue stuffing back the tallegio-drenched potato gratin. Every cloud and all that.
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.
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