The coolest grotty backwater in town
ON A NIGHT out in Dalston it is just possible to forget that you are at the heart of London's most fashionable district. Numerous articles have appeared praising this corner of Hackney. No longer a "grotty backwater", Dalston has become "a throbbing nocturnal destination", with attractions as diverse as a "Moustache Bar" and a club under a furniture store. Now that Shoreditch has fallen victim to its own success, this is apparently where the artists and hedonists are fleeing.
If the centre of cool continues to drift in this direction down the Kingsland Road, by around 2057 my birthplace of Enfield will become home to such insouciant japery, but right now it is Dalston's turn, and given that I live 10 minutes' walk away, I suddenly find myself a little bit fashionable.
Still, as I say, going for dinner on Saturday night in the esteemed local Turkish restaurant, the Stone Cave, my friends and I began to wonder. As its name suggests, the Stone Cave is contoured in plaster to resemble a kitsch grotto, and, for giggles, a belly dancer periodically performs a routine with a scimitar.
It is the sort of thing you might find in a half-forgotten, Turkish-themed corner of Disney World. It also serves some of the finest kebabs known to man and is raucously entertaining. When I asked our waiter how he felt to be at the centre of cool, he looked perplexed and palmed me off with a special-edition Stone Cave 2009 calendar.
Post dinner, we walked down the road to the Moustache Bar - advertised solely by a picture of a tache above a door - but finding it closed pending a new licence we went back in the other direction to the equally new Haggerston. This is more what the trendmakers had in mind: an unpretentious little bar with a pleasantly humming atmosphere. A fine place to drink - but a destination boozer?
What unites Dalston's best spots is that they retain a low-key, local feel. If you arrive in Hoxton or Camden, you gather pretty quickly where you're supposed to head. By contrast, Dalston's secrets lurk behind unmarked doors, disguised in sham caves.
This state of affairs cannot last. If Shoreditch's transformation into a hipster's theme park is anything to go by, Dalston's status will not last beyond 2011 - when the east London line extension opens, and the Tescos that have sprung up on the Kingsland Road recently squeeze out the local businesses.
Meanwhile, if anyone finds a Stone Cave calendar lying around, let me know - I dropped it somewhere.
