Gloria, London EC2: ‘Kicks Brexit gloom up the arse’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent

This kitsch, orchestrated chaos is a ton of fun – and the food is unexpectedly very good, too

Gloria is completely at odds with London’s restaurant scene right now. It is lots and lots of hopelessly optimistic, wanton fun. Along a kerb in Shoreditch of a Friday night, around 100 folk were attempting to gain entry to this new Italian trattoria in order to taste “Filippo’s big balls”.

I generally balk at restaurant queues, because they tend to attract all the usual joyless, food-scene suspects: trust-fund types harvesting content for their Vogon poetry blogs, and those foodie couples who are a bit like swingers, in that one of them is much less into it all and would rather be down Turtle Bay. But this was quite a sexy queue, full of messy-haired, pouting, snake-hipped European sorts, all flocking towards the pizzas, pastas, cicchetti and dolci, as well as the well-stocked bar that serves until 2am.