L’Entrepot

I’ve never eaten here but it is one of my favourite places to stop for a glass of wine. Great décor and atmosphere. Feels like a cool casual European café. Would be a good date place.

L’entrepôt is the kind of place that I should hate, but weirdly I fucking love it. Loads of pricks in Hackney try to be like L’entrepôt but they fuck it up. It shouldn’t be that hard to make really wicked, good quality food and also have staff who are mostly unpretentious and consistently nice to you but for some reason hardly any restaurants seem to nail it. Anyway, me and my friend Lucy would always come here when we had big drugs comedowns and eat this thing called gypsy eggs which feels like quite a racist name for a food but unfortunately it is FUCKING DELICIOUS so I tend to leave my morals at the door and then feel bad about it later. We went in the evening this time though which meant that gypsy eggs were off the menu so we just boshed a couple of glasses of white wine plus a cheese board AND a charcuterie plate because why the fuck not.
We were served by the world’s cutest tiny Spanish pixie, and also by this slightly older woman wearing a completely DAZZLING outfit consisting of an awesome black trouser suit and a pair of pure white reebok classics. She had this weird charisma that made me think maybe she was a semi-​famous artist or someone who didn’t really need this job but just liked doing it. Anyway, we wanted to know what sweetbreads were (I knew they weren’t actually bread, and that they were definitely some gross part of an animal, but wasn’t 100% what) and she was just so nonchalant about it. She kept going ‘I’m not really sure, I think it’s this part (gesturing at her neck in a really elegant way) but I don’t know. I wouldn’t eat it anyway’. She was so cool we didn’t even really register that any normal person would have gone and asked the chef and let us know. I just liked talking to her and staring at her cool face.
As with everything in l’entrepôt, the cheese and meat thingies came out and looked excellent but kind of disappointingly a bit smaller than you’d imagined it in your fatso head. But on this occasion the struggle to finish was genuinely quite real. Probably because I don’t eat that much meat so when I do I get full up really quick. Also they served the cheese with a very unusual chutney that had star anise in it which I’m not normally a fan of but this was the tits. Also you can pay contactless which me and Lucy are full on OBSESSED with doing so that was really the cherry on an already very impressively baked cake.

Food, for the most point was OK. The food portions were the visible definition of rip off. We ordered a lot of starter /​side plates roughly around £10 each. The cheese plate consisted of so little cheese it was 2D, and the meat plate was even less.
The cocktails were OK, they had a good Gin Selection. We did order whiskey sours, non of which had egg white. The wine was great, if perhaps again a little slim on the amount, the glass was tiny.
The tipping point was when we ordered a plate of bread, as all five of us were still hungry; the waiter arrived with 3 tiny pieces of bread no more then the size of 50 pence coin (which we then divided into five).
The waiter was possibly the rudest waiter we had ever encountered, he even referred to the chef as «a crazy person» when we asked about the egg white in the whiskey sours. His exact words were «you can’t reason with a crazy person».
We also asked the waiter about the portion size, when referring to the meat plate he stated that «the meat was meant to be thin» as if we weren’t aware of this.
Needless to say the over all experience was bit like being mugged. Don’t eat there if A: you are hungry and B: you don’t want to pay a bill of more £200 for what seemed like table scraps.

I just love this place. After moving near by it was the great evening treat.
The food is always well done and in between hearty and fine. Can recommend everything– the vegetarian dishes, starters, many are fan of the rotisserie chicken and its my only place for steak tartare.
they have great wines and here is always someone with knowledge and joy to let you try some new entries.
And soon the staff became friends and the entrepôt a place to return to–
no good coffee though.
But you can take housewine home– in a nice bottle.

Love this place! Nestled next to Hackney Downs train station it’s stylish without being pretentious, serves great food and wine and has super friendly service.
Our last visit was more lively than usual thanks to a particularly rowdy table. The staff did a fantastic job looking after us despite being rushed off their feet and having to deal with complaints about overexcited guests. Our waitress was diplomatic and charming.
If you like good wine, great food, friendly staff, this is a great place to go.

This is the wine bar/​eatery part of the Borough Wines group group of shops. Tucked away beside Hackney Downs station it is a welcome addition to the area with a small café/​restaurant at the back and a wine shop at the front similar to their other outlets. We went more for a drink with a bit of food so ordered two starters and a main between two people. The mackerel rillette was a little creamy to be rillettes but was very good nontheless. The steak haché’s flavour was good but I would have liked it less chunky as it took a bit of chewing.
Alongside the charcuterie platter was a cheese platter although it was more an ‘afters’ selection than an alternative to cold/​cured meats. The chutney with it was good but perhaps more Autumn than Spring.
Although it is a great concept to be able to eat good food with good wines the wines list seemed a bit limited. It had a note to say that we could ask for anything from the wine shop although it would be easier to have a wider list on the tables in case the shorter one didn’t take your fancy.
An enjoyable evening but given the level that Borough Wines is aiming for I’d say this review sits between 3 and 4 stars.
Oh and make sure you try the Kernel beers. Amazing flavours!

I’m a big fan of the little Borough Wines shop on Wilton Way. Great wine and great staff, yet despite this place opening a while back I have only just managed to pay it a visit. There have been many failed attempts including not being open at the times advertised on the website, being open but unable to sell anything as they are updating their till software, open to walk in but not open to sell wine (this one confused the hell out of me)…
So back to L’Entrepôt. It has all the good things about their other shops (refillable wine bottles, olive oil, a great selection of delicious wines, a wine expert ‘on tap’ to help you pair your wine with your food) but also has a bar and restaurant. Plus the space is HUGE.
Brunch was reasonably priced and decent. They offer things on bread and there’s kedgeree too. Evening menus look a bit pricier and I am yet to try their main sized meals.
The staff are extremely friendly and the décor is nice. I’m surprised it’s not busier as there is a complete lack of anything similar around Hackney Downs station and you’d think it’d be rammed with hipsters and pram-​pushing mums on a Saturday lunchtime (they’re probably all at Broadway market). As it was, we had a relaxed snack with a paper, picked a bottle of wine up for dinner and then strolled off home.