Fun is such an under-rated quality in a restaurant. When I think about where I want to go for dinner when off the clock, it’s not always to the places with the most intricate, ambitious food or the ones with the most eye-popping design. Always and inevitably, I’m drawn back to places where, more than anything else, I had a really good time.
The Laughing Heart’s owner, Charlie Mellor (ex-Brawn and Elliot’s, another couple of crackers) is here to show you the absolute best of times. When I reject his suggestion of an orange natural wine (with the grape skins left on until it’s muscular and frequently overbearing), I worry that this makes me the equivalent of the woman who orders decaff in the spoddy cold-brew coffee specialist.
He laughs: “Not at all. I want whatever you have to be delicious. There will be something on the list that’s perfect for you, and I’ll find it.” And, with a Reciotto di Gambellara from Angiolino Maule and a murky, caramel-and-roasted-nut dessert wine (“Oh, we might as well just have the bottle”) that help rack up a bill that’s far more than normal ungreedy people will pay, he sure does.
The Laughing Heart is one of the new breed of wine bars that are enjoying something of a starry moment right now, just about the only good news from 2016. Rather than plonk and pasta, they offer long, thoughtful, risk-taking wine lists and proper cooking in jovial, unstuffy environments: the sort of place in which I’d happily piss away the rest of my days. The proper cooking here is conducted by chef Tom Anglesea in a small open kitchen, and while dishes might look odd on paper – “pumpkin cappelletti, whey and sage” – they pretty much deliver with aplomb on the plate. That pasta dish is simply enlightening: who knew that caramelising whey would end up like a lighter, creamier brown butter with notes of savoury Caramac (that’s a compliment, by the way), its nuttiness bathing egg-rich parcels of slumpy roast squash liberally scattered with good parmesan and leaves of fried sage?
Chicken-liver paté, silky enough to just creep off the plate, comes with a veil of agar-jellied walnut liqueur, melba-thin toast and wafers of crisp chicken skin. This, well – this is just a great, great thing. As you can see, it renders me virtually speechless. I want a tonne of it, applied to my body like a mud pack. I think the aged Hereford sirloin might have been sous-vided to give it a flawless scarlet interior, but it has a fine, dark crust from the grill and a sharp, buttery wallop from a kind-of-hollandaise spiked with Serragghia capers. There’s offal (chicken hearts with bacon and black vinegar) and greens (kale and pak choi), both dishes savoury with soy and pleasingly charred from the application of fierce heat. Dessert is an extraordinary, dense goo of chocolate and salted caramel topped with a pebbledash of sweet, roasted peanuts. I intend to have just a spoonful to taste, but somehow the whole thing finds its way down my neck.
This is drinking food: massive, in-yer-face flavours, with an unabashed and unstinting use of salt and fat. I love all the “snacks” that kick off the menu: fine, crusty baguette with whipped butter laced with rich brown crabmeat, potato crisps dusted with Japanese furikake (dried seaweed and spice mix) to swoop through a cloud of cod’s roe. Deep-fried olives stuffed with Thai-fragranced pork are salty little explosives, and we can’t get enough of them. Pass the fizz, fast.
Mellor, a large, beardy chap who radiates humour and bonhomie, started the Laughing Heart (the name’s from a Bukowski poem) with every penny he possessed in the world. He’s clearly doing something he loves. Everything in the place is designed to amp up the good times: the cutlery drawer in the tables, so you’re always able to get stuck straight in; the ice-filled metal trough under a canopy of glasses in the centre of the room, so you never have to wait for the next drink. The fact that it’s often open until the dangerous hours of the morning is evidence of that hospitality – we leave at nearly one-ish, and people are still piling through the doors. There’s some singing. A lot of drinking (not all of it from us). And, yes, a whole lot of unbuttoned, big-hearted fun.
• The Laughing Heart 277 Hackney Road, London E2, 020-7686 9535. Open dinner only, Weds-Sat 7pm-2am, Sun noon-midnight. About £30 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Value for money 7/10
