Foxlow N16

In French she would be called 'la renarde', and be hunted with only her cunning to protect her

Stoke Newington - April 2015

Unless you've been living under a rock (and therefore also under constant threat of eviction for the redevelopment of said rock into some super-expensive pebbles to be sold to rich foreign types - POLITICS!), you should be vaguely au fait with the concept of Hawksmoor and their really rather excellent restaurants. Well, perhaps less restaurants, more temples devoted to the worship of the meat gods.

About 18 months ago, the team behind Hawksmoor branched out with Foxlow in Farringdon, a ‘neighbourhood restaurant’, featuring the stuff that makes Hawksmoor great; high quality meat, top notch cooking, & Shakey Pete's ginger brew – in a laid-back bistro setting.

Clearly the concept has been a success, as this week Foxlow Mk2 opened in uber-trendy Stoke Newington. And as fearless food bloggers, we felt it necessary to go check it out and report back. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it…

And in a hardly-ground-breaking development, the place is excellent. A cosy, if noisy (wooden floors & no soft furnishings) dining room with the faded-glory retro décor that permeates all the restaurants. There’s definitely nothing faded about the glory of the food, which is especially on point with the meatiest options.

For starters that means belly ribs. Oh the ribs. Hawksmoor's tamworth belly ribs are probably still top two in my long romance with the rib. A twist here on their classic sauce, now heavier with spice; a healthy dose of cumin giving it a slightly Indian hint whilst a chilli warmth builds on the taste-buds. The meat is moist, not overly fatty, and so tender. Not particularly charred and light on the smoke (although there is a small red smoke ring in evidence), but it’s the sauce that makes it a triumph.

Our other starter of squid is enjoyable; coated in crispy, golden, peppery batter. It looks beautiful on the plate. It’s just not ribs, so we can’t love it as much.

If we had a Foxlow locally and was a more frequent visitor, we might find it a lot easier to see past the utterly delicious Ginger Pig steaks on offer. But we don't (*cough* open one in South London *cough*), so we can't, and it’s deckle steak for mains. Cooked pink, well-seasoned and with a great char on the outside, it's a fine example of their work. Even the connective tissue running straight down the middle of it cannot dampen things.


But the best thing about the dish is the huge paper-weight of a bone on the side packed through with meltingly-soft marrow.

Less excellent was the Foxlow fried chicken. The meat was tasty, and juicy. However, it was also on the greasy side. Not Dr Nick’s Window-to-Weight-Gain greasy, but enough to be noticeable. Also, the batter did not adhere to the chicken and fell off as soon as the chicken was picked up, which was a tad annoying.

Seemingly stuffed, we still had our just desserts. A knock-out one-two punch of a chocolate salted caramel tart, and a passion fruit & soft-serve ’Eton mess’.

The tart was heavy with quality bitter dark chocolate. The caramel is strongly salted, but holds the balance well.  Added flakes of sea salt on top of the chocolate, and there are a couple of occasions when the flavour goes nuclear. And the Eton mess was a great end to our feast; fresh and tangy, it's an excellent palate cleanser that rounded things off so nicely, we even forgave the hard and possibly shop-bought nature of the meringue…

Great place, great food; they've done it again. Those aging hipsters in Stokey have never had it so good.

71-73 Church Street,
Stoke Newington
London 
N16 0AS
http://www.foxlow.co.uk/