Sune

Charlie Sims and Honey Spencer opened Sune amid the video-production facilities and fight-clubs of rejuvenated Hackney in early 2024, at one edge of Broadway Market, behind a turquoise frontage on the main road but with a window at one end of the irregularly shaped room offering peeps on to the Regent's Canal. It's clearly been taken to heart by a gang of loyal regulars, and offers a warmly embracing style of service, with simple modern bistro dishes that emerge from a partially viewable kitchen. Among the snacks, things in shells are not to be missed: a lovely Carlingford oyster acidulated with grapefruit juice and aromatised with fennel; a red-hot grilled scallop in blood-oranged Champagne butter. The three starters when we visited were a serving of wafer-thin ox tongue dressed in salsa verde and piled with watercress, a stracciatella salad, and – bemusingly – a hefty serving of roast lamb shoulder with leeks, wild garlic and labneh, a supporting act with ambitions to become the main draw, if ever there was. The actual main draws are less inspired then what goes before. Fish and meat come in two sizes, the first perhaps a barbecued fillet of bream with untreated shredded kohlrabi, the latter a pork chop of such enormous heft that its larger sibling must be positively intimidating. It was decent meat, with plenty of fat, in a thin Madeira wash speckled with green peppercorns. To finish, lemon tart might come with obtrusively salted house-made mascarpone, but do make room for a couple of the salt caramel chocolate truffles. Wines are a bit of a jumble, with some slippage between the ‘natural’ and ‘white’ categories, but there is a clear effort to source interesting flavours to accompany the food.