* Update November 2019: not long since the F Cooke sign, top, was reinstated, the virtually vegetarian Dudleys at 123 Kingsland High Street E8 2PB joined the list of closed eateries

ANOTHER CLOSURE has shaken Dalston’s turbulent restaurant scene at the same time as other eateries — some of them independent-owned, others chains — are being bravely opened.

Macaroni Liberation Front, the café-bakery, at the CLR James Library, launched by Maia Rossi and Alessia Mastroleo in 2016 as Donna Fügassa, is ending with a party. Behind the fun front, however, there is sadness that the artisan-food and communitarian approach did not make for a viable business.

Mastroleo blamed several factors, including the difficulties caused by the proposed Brexit and the minimum wage which, she told Loving Dalston, “is difficult for small businesses, although of course it is necessary, to cover the high cost of living in London”.

Around the corner, board-game café Draughts has moved from Haggerston to follow the Shanghai restaurant into the Kingsland High Street location.

The Shanghai, in the old F. Cooke eel-pie-and-mash building, was a diner oasis in the years when Dalston was a foodie desert. The Grade II listed premises is also widely loved and the new occupants promise to respect the art nouveau exterior and interiors.

Plans by London restaurateur Charlotte Wilde to turn the Cooke premises into a wine bar and desk space for creatives last year got huge online publicity — but came to nothing. She would not say why she withdrew.

Several shopfronts away Pret a Manger has posted a notice saying it is opening “soon”. Loving Dalston revealed this spring that the sandwich-and-hot-drinks chain was coming to the town centre.

Pret may not be as much of a threat to existing independents as their owners fear. La Petite Bretagne, in premises across the street, failed, and as Pret may learn, Dalston has had problems with feral behaviour by groups of teenagers.

McDonald’s, opposite the Pret site, built a handsome sun terrace in 2017, but despite the passing of two summers, still has not opened the roof section.

Could it be still worried about youthful disruption? Two years ago the burgers franchise had to hire bouncers to repel troubled youngsters bothering customers. Creative police strategies were successfully applied.

Organised crime persists. Several traders in the Kingsland Centre mall have lately had heavy losses, one stall losing thousands of pounds of gold in a break-in by thieves. And the lost youths problem lingers below the surface.

Less vulnerable to violence is Ridley Road Social Club (RRSC),  which has replaced the Hackney Creative Social Club in a big space on the first floor above the Turkish Food Centre in Ridley Road east. Indications are that RRSC can do better at enticing passers-by up the stairs.

East of Dalston, the pre-hipster pioneer, Bohemia Hackney, at the bottom off Narrow Way E8, has closed, just as millennial venues fill the railway arches of Bohemia Place. 

David Altheer 011119

* Not in any order, closures you might have missed: Wolfie’s, Greenwood Road (soon to open anew under a French owner); Screwdriver, Ridley Road; La Petite Bretagne and Fed By Water, both in Kingsland High Street; A Little of What You Fancy and Rotorino, Kingsland Road, Haggerston; Haunch, Stoke Newington Road; White Rabbit and Gujarati Rasoi, Bradbury Street; Element, Queensbridge Road; Le Ziz, Dalston Square; Rita’s, Mare Street

* All pictures © DavidAltheer [at] gmail.com, and all for sale for reproduction. Bigger format versions usually available.

* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.