Do you remember the Cereal Killer Café? The year was 2014: a time of sleeveless plaid shirts, Mr Pringle moustaches, man buns and undercuts. This was the era of proto vapes and misplaced millennial hope, of the indie band Vampire Weekend and trilby hats mistaken for fedoras. When the Cereal Killer Café opened in Brick Lane that year to sell cereal and milk for stupid prices, it signalled the acme of hyper-gentrification and the ‘peak’ east London aesthetic. Many of us saw its pandemic-related closure in 2020 as a sign that sanity had returned to the capital’s restaurant scene.

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We were wrong. The Cereal Killer Café might be gone but the public’s credulity for overpriced Instagrammable restaurants is piping hot. And, while the era of the gimmick restaurant is in its twilight, London’s food scene is still in trouble. 

A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with friends at one of east London’s trendiest restaurants – designed, like all such restaurants, to be the least comfortable dining experience imaginable. Polycarbonate roof? Check. Zippered sailboat material for walls? Check. The preliminary menu explanation: ‘Are you familiar with the concept of sharing plates?’ You betcha.

I’m not going to bore you with the........

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