Turkish grills on Kingsland Road, the canal at Haggerston, and Dalston's late bars and clubs.
Daytime
(4)Ridley Road Market, Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, the Regent’s Canal towpath, De Beauvoir squares
Allpress Espresso Roastery & Cafe
Allpress's UK roastery and flagship cafe in a converted Dalston timber yard: beans loaded into silos in view of the tables, a two-floor room and a large planted patio that fills the moment the sun appears.
Editor's Pick$
Order: A clean batch filter, or a flat white on the Allpress blend, with the Scandi breakfast plate (avocado, jammy eggs, cheese, three breads).Best: Weekday morning for the terrace; on sunny days the outside benches go by 11am.
Batch Baby
Multi-roaster cafe on the ground floor of the Rose Lipman community building: a candy-red La Marzocco, rotating guest beans (Skylark, Coborn and others), cheap well-made batch filter and a suntrap terrace.
Editor's Pick$
Order: The batch filter (their namesake, some of the best-priced pour-over in town) and a prosciutto toastie.Best: Mid-morning on a weekday; weekends are busy with the De Beauvoir/Haggerston crowd.
The Baring
Opened in August 2022 on the site of the former Poet, and now ranked seventeenth in the national Top 50 Gastropubs after entering as the highest new entry in 2023. A bright, stripped-back room that keeps bar stools for drinkers rather than turning wholly into a restaurant. Head chef Rob Tecwyn came from Dabbous, and the kitchen is listed in the Michelin Guide. Closed Mondays.
Stamped$$$
Order: The quail shish — the Michelin Guide calls it an established favourite starter, and Grace Dent named it too.Best: Sunday lunch, when the roasts run — Sundays close at 6pm.
Mangal 2
A Dalston institution on Stoke Newington Road since 1994, now reborn under the founder's sons Sertac and Ferhat Dirik as a refined, modern Turkish restaurant that has moved well beyond the traditional ocakbasi grill. The art-world connections remain — Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George, and the YBA crowd adopted the original as their canteen — but the cooking has evolved into something more sophisticated: seasonal tasting menus, modern technique applied to Turkish ingredients, and a dining room that reflects the ambition. The charcoal grill is still present but it serves a more considered menu than the kebab house of legend.
Inked$$$
Order: The tasting menu for the full modern vision — the Dirik brothers have moved beyond the a la carte grill format. If ordering individually, the grilled dishes remain excellent but the seasonal plates and the more ambitious cooking showcase what Mangal 2 has become. The wine list has been upgraded. Turkish tea remains the correct finish.Best: Dinner, Thursday-Saturday, when the kitchen is at its most ambitious and the room has the most energy. Weeknight dinners are calmer. Lunch is intimate.
Evening & Night
(3)Kingsland Road ocakbaşı grills, Dalston bars and clubs, Rio Cinema late shows
Three Sheets
Max and Noel Venning's Dalston bar that proved a world-class cocktail programme could operate from a neighbourhood bar with no pretension, no speakeasy gimmicks, and no door policy. The menu is short — six or seven drinks — and each one is built with the kind of technical precision that comes from stripping everything back to what actually matters in the glass. The room is small, the furniture is simple, and the atmosphere is the atmosphere of a bar where your neighbours happen to be drinking some of the best cocktails in London. Three Sheets defined a category: the neighbourhood cocktail bar that competes at the highest level without asking you to dress up, book ahead, or pay Mayfair prices.
Editor's Pick$$
Order: The entire menu, in order, if you're staying. The list is short (six or seven drinks) and every one earns its place. The Vennings' approach is reductive — fewer ingredients, more precision — so each drink has the clarity of something that has been edited rather than decorated. Ask what's new if you've been before; the menu rotates. The simplicity is the point: this is cocktail drinking without performance.Best: Early evening on a weekday when you can sit at the bar and talk to whoever's making drinks. Weekend nights are busier but the room absorbs the energy well. The Dalston location means the surrounding Kingsland Road restaurants provide context for a full evening — Turkish grills, Vietnamese, and the general productive chaos of E8.
Rio Cinema
Grade II Art Deco independent cinema: F. E. Bromige's 1937 streamlined remodelling of a 1915 picture house, with the blue-and-pink auditorium restored to his design in 1997 and a second basement screen added 2017.
Inked
Order: Elain Harwood's 'sweeping curves': the rounded corner, horizontal banding and the neon RIO lettering.Best: An evening screening; the facade photographs best after dark.
The Prince George
Large one-bar Victorian backstreet pub between Dalston and London Fields: pool table, jukebox, dartboard in the tiny back room, stuffed birds in glass cases and a front terrace that fills on warm nights.
Inked$$
Order: A Guinness or the local cask on the handpumps; the burgers are the food to trust.Best: Early evening before the after-work crowd; busy weekend nights now have a doorman.