Jimi Famurewa reviews Mare Street Market: Less would be more at the cluttered Dining Room

Head-turning: The Dining Room at Hackney's Mare Street Market

Jimi Famurewa @jimfam24 January 2019

Ambience: 3/5

Food: 3/5

Mare Street Market is, it has to be said, a lot. A capacious, neon-bathed, um, ‘food, drink and design consortium’ with an obliging array of different ways in which to be fed (Brunch! Sunday roast! Pizza!) and a lot of other E8 attractions, seemingly pulled out of a bucket of ideas marked ‘Things Millennials Apparently Quite Like’.

There is a fancy record store and a high-grade florist, deli, coffee shop and miniature liquor store. There is even a little studio specifically marketed as a place to create podcasts. And now, the final piece of this grand, multi-use jigsaw is here in the form of The Dining Room; a fancier corralled area that serves a slender, grown-up dinner menu from Wednesday to Saturday. Its vaguely New British dishes are the creative progeny of chef Dom Moldenhauer, a plainly gifted cook who, nonetheless, presides over a kitchen that is prone to more than a touch of muddled overeagerness.

The Dining Room is an undeniably a head-turning space. On a chilly Wednesday night, two friends and I passed from the lively main area into a kind of darkened, indoor scrapyard, starved of customers but swarmed with vintage chandeliers and other Insta-ready curios (stone statues, mirrors, an actual taxidermy giraffe) worth thousands of pounds and available for purchase through local dealer Pure White Lines. From the Snack section, ‘pastrami sandwich’ was a Reubenised crostini bearing a thick slab of beef and a teetering pile of gutsy, possibly horseradish-laced sauerkraut. From the same section, two plump, carefully grilled scallops came beneath a crispy sheaf of cavolo nero and were served in the shell, splashing in a bisque-like miso butter sauce that had chilli heat and proper slurpable decadence.

Maximalism: Starters at Mare Street Market

Of the shared starters, crab tartare — luscious hunks of, I thought, just-cooked crustacean, fennel shavings and a thin moat of tarragon oil — was decent enough. BBQ short rib, plopped on a semi circle of hash brown and a fried duck egg, was lifted by a terrific prune and date brown sauce, balancing fruit and spice on a knife-edge.

Mains solidified the fact it was going to be one of those meals in which each spark of imagination is tempered by either unfortunate sloppiness or needless maximalism — or both. Cod came with a golden-crisped skin, appealingly charred spring onions and a great, puffed-up nori cracker but was hopelessly overcooked. Duck breast had a faint pinkness and a decent, accompanying brick of blackened Parmesan polenta improving a tomato-less, alleged wild mushroom ragu. Yielding, flavoursome braised ox cheek, with moreish patties of bread dumpling, absolutely did not need half a gherkin gracelessly lobbed on top of it. I was the only one to tackle pudding — lumpen Russian chocolate cheesecake with wincingly tart poached rhubarb. The less said about it, the better.

And yet, I am inclined to cut them a little slack. It was only the second week back after Christmas, the bill (even with a mid-list bottle of hefty Italian red) didn’t climb to a brazen height and any kitchen that can produce spine-stiffening forkfuls like those scallops and that short rib, blotted in lots of unholy, supercharged HP, deserves serious credit. There is also, commendably, an interesting-looking veggie and vegan menu.

The Dining Room sates a modern demand for a little of everything and offers the chance to feast amid hoarded antiques. But in its food, if not the decor, it would benefit greatly from an old-fashioned bit of decluttering.