Tavern, Shoreditch: British bistro cooking with chic swagger and an all-welcome vibe
“You know what, I actually do like sweetbreads now.”
Keep up, mate: Tavern, taking over the former Nest site on Old Street, is the new British bistro from the team behind Michelin-starred Restaurant St Barts, and has already become one of those places where everyone seems to know someone who’s been.
“You have to try the onion thing,” people whisper in pubs. “You know what, I actually do like sweetbreads now,” says your newly-converted pal.
Thankfully, unlike a lot of trendy East London openings, Tavern actually earns the hype — a chic blend of classic British dishes with a contemporary (trendy, even) feel, it’s Shoreditch’s soon to be worst-kept secret.
WHERE IS IT?
You’ll find Tavern on Old Street, sitting right on the divide between the tech-bro energy of Silicon Roundabout and Shoreditch’s permanently scruffy creative cool. Old Street station is a short walk away, and it’s an easy trot from Shoreditch High Street overground, too.
Inside, it strikes a smart balance between polished and unfussy. There are paper tablecloths ready to be ripped away between sittings, dishes arrive whenever they’re ready, and the open kitchen dominates the room like a theatre-in-the-round performance — you can watch chefs plate up while nursing a cocktail two feet away, so no sneezing.
The room itself is handsome without trying too hard — candlelit, with whitewashed walls, there are fur throws over the mis-matched wooden seating and what appear to be agricultural tools on the shelves, giving a homely feel to warm the room. The vibe is supposed to invoke that of a local pub — but it’s a darn sight smarter than any pub I’ve ever rolled out of.
WHAT’S SPECIAL?
If you’re a fan of great eats, Tavern’s pedigree precedes it. Tavern is the latest project from the team behind Nest and Restaurant St Barts, pivoting away from Nest’s tasting-menu format into something looser and more nostalgic.
Executive chef Brendan Appleby — whose CV includes Silo, Lyle’s and Inver, as well as most recently Restaurant St Barts — oversees a menu rooted in British produce and bistro-style comfort cooking, with a sustainably-sourced promise, filtered through modern London restaurant sensibilities.
That means rich sauces, open-fire cooking, excellent seafood and deeply savoury snacks designed to make ordering conservatively nigh-on impossible.
The food lands somewhere between elevated pub dining and contemporary British fine dining, without tipping too far into either category. One minute you’re eating cod roe with pig skin crackling like the fanciest pub snack imaginable, the next you’re hitting the ewe’s curd to show off how refined your palate has become in your post-Pot Noodle renaissance days.
WHAT’S NEW?
Tavern itself is just a few weeks old. The restaurant only opened this spring, replacing Nest after nearly a decade of acclaim.
But the bigger story is the tonal shift. Where Nest leaned serious and tasting-menu-heavy, Tavern is intentionally more relaxed. The cooking still has Michelin-level technique humming underneath it all, but the experience is designed to feel jolly rather than ceremonial.
There’s also a big focus on nostalgic British flavours — cocktails riffing on classics, rich meat and rarely-used cuts, buttery puddings, excellent seafood — all served in a room that buzzes from the second you walk in.
WHO SHOULD YOU BRING?
Bring friends who like food enough to discuss sauces, but not those that think sweetbread means, well, ‘sweet bread’.
This is a brilliant group-dinner spot because the room has genuine energy. It’s loud enough to feel exciting, but not so noisy you have to communicate entirely through eyebrow movements. The service style also encourages sharing and grazing, with dishes arriving steadily rather than in rigid courses.
It would work well for a date too — particularly if your ideal romance involves arguments over who tucked away the most crackling.
I’d leave the kids at home, unless your child enjoys offal and natural wine.
WHAT SHOULD YOU WEAR?
Whatever you like, so long as it fits into that nebulous wear-it-like-you-mean-it Shoreditch slither of fashion’s Venn diagram. Nobody’s wearing ties, but equally this isn’t a tracksuit-and-backwards-cap situation.
WHAT WILL YOU PAY?
This is comfortably in special occasion territory, though it won’t bankrupt you.
A couple of cocktails, wine, snacks, mains and dessert will realistically land somewhere around £80-£120 per person depending on how enthusiastically you attack the menu. That sounds steep — and it is — but the quality backs it up.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DRINK?
The sweet negroni was excellent — softer and more rounded than the bitter, aggressive versions currently fashionable across East London. The beef-fat Old Fashioned, meanwhile, was undeniably good, even if the promised savoury depth never entirely materialised beyond “competently made Old Fashioned”.
There’s also a strong natural and low-intervention wine list, with staff happy to guide you through it without making you feel like an idiot. The orange wine we drank worked beautifully with the richer dishes and salty snacks.
The showstopper we’ve heard is the pickleback martini, spiced with chili and served with a slice of salami — though a previous pickleback hangover experience made us a little too shy to knock one back on this occasion.
MUST-TRY DISHES?
The Chunion Puffs are non-negotiable.
Order them immediately. They’re little cheese-and-onion pastry bombs somewhere between a gougère, a pie and a deeply irresponsible pub snack. They’re sure to be the signature calling card of Tavern.
The cod roe with pig skin crackling was another standout — salty, crisp, deeply moreish and perfectly calibrated for drinking alongside cocktails. There’s none of the greasiness usually associated with crackling, and the giant strips are great fun when they turn up on your table.
For mains, the turbot and cockles was superb: delicately cooked fish under a crisp crumb, sitting in laverbread, a boiled seaweed concoction that moved between earthy lentils, sweet peas and complemented the bright bursts of vinegar from the cockles.
The Lowfield farm hogget and ewe’s curd delivered exactly what you’d hope for — rich, deeply savoury meat with properly concentrated flavour. Even the chips — listed simply as “Some chips” — earned their place, soft on the inside and with a nice bite on the outside, performing vital sauce-mopping duties.
For dessert, don’t skip the mini brown butter cakes. Intensely buttery with a salty, shortbread-like base and creamy topping, they perfectly capture the homely vibe that Tavern serves up.
GET ON THE GUESTLIST?
Unlike many fashionable East London restaurants, Tavern understands something crucial: people don’t just want to be impressed anymore. They want to enjoy themselves. This is a generous and warm restaurant, not afraid to challenge you with its menu — but rewarding for those that want to see British cuisine taken to new heights.
Grab a tankard, munch at the pig skin crackling, kick back and enjoy. With quality like this, it’s not like any ‘tavern’ I’ve eaten at before, and your locals (not to mention the rest of East London’s top tier restaurants), will need to up their game in response.
Tavern can be found at 374-378 Old Street, London, EC1V 9LT, and is open Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm–2pm for lunch, and 5pm-9pm for dinner. Reservations are essential, and are booked through OpenTable.
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