At Clementine, a new café in Islington, north London, several staples of the 21st century brunch canon are conspicuously absent. There’s no avocado on toast, no shakshuka. Instead, you might find tattie scones with lorne sausage, bara brith and Scotch oat pancakes.
Clementine offers something rare in London: regional British fare. The capital’s discerning diners know their Keralan from Punjabi and Sicilian from Tuscan but, with a few exceptions (think Cornish pasties or haggis), are largely clueless about Britain’s intricacies.
Now restaurants are beginning to celebrate Britain’s regionality. In 2024, Scottish deli The Shoap opened in Islington, followed earlier this year by Bara, a Welsh café in Peckham. ‘Modern Northumbrian’ restaurant Waterhouse arrived in east London in August, while B. Penhale, celebrating regional British and Irish fare, will open in November, as will Clerk’s House in Smithfield, celebrating London’s food culture. A restaurant serving the cuisine of Jersey is also in the pipeline.
British regionality has long been overlooked, or downright forgotten. Extended postwar rationing saw many turn to more pragmatic sustenance. Time-sensitive home cooks renounced labour-intensive recipes in favour of convenient ready meals. Foreign cuisines, often more exciting, replaced local dishes on the dinner table. Unlike many European countries, ‘we’ve never celebrated our peasant food,’ says Clementine’s owner, Anna Higham. ‘London’s always had this international outlook, I guess that’s the leftovers of empire.’ For Gabriel Waterhouse, chef-owner of Waterhouse, ‘the truth is, we don’t have the richness of food culture that France or Italy have.’
Clementine, which opened this month, is a continuation of Higham’s bakery, Quince, which eschews European traditions in favour of British heritage. Clementine is introducing Staffordshire oatcakes – yeasted pancakes eaten with classic fry-up fare that should, frankly, be widely celebrated. At lunch you might find a salad with skirlie, a Scottish oatmeal. The ploughman’s lunch will feature a rotating cast of territorials – traditional British cheeses like cheddar, wensleydale and cheshire. Higham plans to introduce Arbroath smoakies, lavercakes and butteries, a flaky roll from Aberdeen. There will be stovies, a Scottish stew, and mussel brose and partan bree, two unheralded seafood soups.
‘A lot of stuff I’ve just read about, I’ve never actually eaten,’ says Higham, who grew up near Glasgow. Many of her staff hail from regions, including Manchester and Blackpool, or Scotland and Ireland, and are encouraged to introduce specialties. Some dishes, including cock-a-leekie, a chicken and leek broth, are new to most customers, but have been well received.
Waterhouse, just off Columbia Road, is a vastly different proposal: a fine-dining establishment with a 12-course tasting menu. Yet it is equally dedicated to regionality, in this case honing in on Northumberland. ‘The longer I’ve been away from where I grew up, the more I’ve yearned for it,’ says Waterhouse. Raised in a small village near the Scottish border (the restaurant also leans into Scottish produce and dishes), he describes the food of his childhood as ‘simple’. Pheasants would be left hanging on the front door after shoots. The ‘sparse landscape’ was covered in cattle and sheep. The seafood was unrivalled, much of it smoked, including the famous Craster kippers.
Though not faithfully recreating Northumbrian dishes, Waterhouse is bringing the flavours of his youth. ‘Smoked haddock porridge’ features potent smoky fish, fermented barley and mussels, and a mustard and Northumbrian whisky sauce. ‘Those flavours feel very familiar to me,’ says Waterhouse. Sunday lunch reimagines a lamb hotpot with elements inspired by a local classic, stotties with pease pudding and ham.
Waterhouse describes it as ‘an interpretation of what you can do with some of the ingredients and food from the north’. Northerners, he says, have been impressed. ‘It’s really lovely, because it’s not like they’re eating food they’d expect in the north.’ In a fine-dining world that canonises French, Italian and Japanese fare, it would be no surprise if the restaurant received a Michelin star. That in itself feels quietly revolutionary.
B. Penhale is set to open in Farringdon in November. Chef-patron Elliot Hashtroudi made his name with offal-forward French cookery, often guided by regionality, at Camille in Borough Market. He now wants to ‘champion the different regions of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales’. The restaurant will have two sections. A formal dining room harking back to ‘tradition and Victorian and Edwardian dishes’, and a ‘fun and playful’ bar celebrating the past 100 years, where immigration has changed British and Irish dining. There will be a take on the spice bag, a Chinese-Irish creation, a riff on Glaswegian tikka masala, and nods to London’s Caribbean communities.
Hashtroudi is partly motivated by outdated stereotypes of British food. ‘So much American opinion, or old opinion, is that it’s sausage and mash, fish and chips, roast on a Sunday. But there’s so much rich history, going back to feeding kings and queens, spice routes, celebrating immigration’.
Expect takes on Lancashire calamari (tripe) and hearty northern stews. There will be regional classics rarely found elsewhere, like scouse (‘tweaked a bit, as a lot of British food looks like slop on a plate’) and dishes almost no-one will have heard of, such as Mendip wallfish – snails cooked in cider. ‘It’s going to be a lot of work for the front of house to explain some of these dishes, but it’s really exciting,’ says Hashtroudi.
The post-pandemic world has seen a rise in nostalgic dining. ‘People are romanticising simple food,’ says Waterhouse. ‘There’s a yearning for the past, in politics, and that’s filtering down to culture and food. Maybe that plays into this regional idea, creating dishes from your upbringing.’ Higham believes the dominance of ‘modern European’, a borderless cuisine taking inspiration from across the continent, might have reached saturation point. ‘Particularly in London, we’re all using the same suppliers, everyone’s got access to the same stuff. I think it is people trying to find a new source of inspiration. I don’t know if anyone needs to hear another story of people being like, I read Elizabeth David or I went to the River Cafe. People want something new, and this is another perspective.’
If that perspective results in dishes like cock-a-leekie, a humble Scottish classic, it is more than welcome. A rich, complex, fatty broth with chicken, leeks, spelt and prunes, offering a sweet-sour tang, it is reminiscent of classic chicken soups like Jewish penicillin, yet most Britons will never have tried it. Higham says cooks like her and Marcus Westlake, Clementine’s head chef, have a ‘huge wealth of knowledge and skill and tradition’, to draw from. ‘We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.’ On Thursday at midday during its first week, Clementine is rammed; a queue slowly builds outside. Evidently, many diners agree.
