Review: Sune, Hackney

Okay, so we should have said something. Then again, recognising when your dining room is too cold and fixing it ought to be part of the service. The lady at the table next to us kept her scarf on through her meal and everyone else kept their jumpers and cardigans on. A fella two tables over did the same very English thing as us: didn’t say anything until the end of the meal, when the lady bringing the bill asked how everything was and got a meek “well, actually it was a bit cold” out of him.

I’ve got that off my chest now. The weather had just turned from mild to bitterly cold that very day, and sometimes heating systems definitely take a day to get themselves caught up. So let’s put that behind us and look at our actual lunch at Sune, a sleek little modern restaurant overlooking the canal near Broadway Market.

Apart from the cold, service was friendly but a bit sluggish; our 3-course lunch spread out over 2 leisurely hours and that wasn’t our doing (heck, we’d have liked to have headed elsewhere for a warm-up much sooner!). Comfy seating and pleasingly solid crockery. The menu can work as 3 courses or small plates and the food is comfortably good.

Our snack is a plate of potato chips with egg yolk sauce drizzled over, scattered with chives and nuggets of boquerones. It’s a nice bar snack and I’m definitely going to take it home. Needed more of the egg yolk for that to really impinge on the crisps. Next up we have an unexpected marriage: steak tartare on top of a croque monsieur. This is actually one of those sleazily-good combos, the tartare heavily dosed with paprika, the bechamel more like gooey American cheese, the bread underneath from a soft white loaf. A bigger one of these would just be a really great filthy lunch.

The other two dishes were more restaurant-y. Salt baked celeriac had a great firm texture and beautiful flavour, served with lamb’s lettuce salad and caramelised almonds. The trout was full-flavoured and gently cooked, served on a luscious vermouth sauce with a scatter of sea veg and a couple of plump lightly pickled mussels. I guess we should have taken their advice and ordered a side with it; as a main course it was effectively just the piece of fish.

These four dishes ended up on the light side so we finished off with puds, actually perhaps the stars of the show. My burnt citrus sorbet has bags of flavour and little chunks of the fruit through it, and was topped with silky blow-torched meringue. Maureen’s pear tarte tatin was a gorgeous little number; the fruit, the crisp pastry and the slighty-bitter caramel all nailed. Refreshing dollop of milk ice cream on top.

I like the food at Sune, if it was in my neighbourhood I’d probably think of it as a local favourite. That said, it’s not really splendid enough to make me take another trip across town for. Of course we also didn’t have the greatest experience – but I’m very willing to just put that down to the weather and maybe a busy Saturday service.