Leman Street Tavern, Aldgate

In what was once the colourful heart of the old Jewish East End, the pogrom continues unchecked. Championed by a megalomaniac Mayor who has the interests of Brexit Boris, not London or Britain, at the heart of his cold calculating heart; Goodman’s Fields is yet another shining example of the shiny boxy bland ghettoes to greed that are disfiguring our city, robbing it of all originality and charm. At the entrance to this new 'luxury' slum, Geronimo Inns has splashed out a tidy sum on its latest trough and watering hole, Leman Street Tavern. The same £1.5 million would just about buy a banker a pad here - although possibly not one with a view of the equine civic 'art' that announces it. This is a blessing in disguise: two bronze stallions frolicking in a stream are the sort of trashy 70s sculptures only Beverley from Abigail's Party or deranged deceased dictators, the Caesescus, would brook in their front yard's brook. Geronimo Inns' ('a group of proper pubs with an eye for the different and the delicious’) newbie is comfy, colourful and serviceable… but for ‘different’ read 'design-by-numbers after various punchier postmodern bar-brasserie-gastropubs.' ‘Delicious’? That'll be Macon-Lugny on a list that largely sits south of £30 and offers two dozen choices by the glass for sunny day stragglers drawn to a generic pavement terrace  onto a chronically congested A-road. Fill up on bar snacks of black pudding sausage roll, baked Camembert with buttered soldiers, and potato and leek hotpot. Dine on crab gratin followed by pork faggot, greens and mash, with fried milk and poached rhubarb for afters at  LST, the sort of mid-market one-size-fits-all gaff I imagine morning TV Haribore eye candy Susanna Reid might fancy. Me? I'm off to grittier gaffs on nearby polyglot Brick Lane...before the Curse of the Developer destroys it too. 

Goodman’s Fields, Leman Street, E1 8EY 3437 0001www.lemanstreettavern.co.uk 

Apples and Pears, Whitechapel

At funky East End newbie, Apples & Pears - that's Cockney rhyming slang for hairy mares in too-tight flares or summat - rookie shakermaker gets the benefit of my pop-up martini masterclass after his effort, cribbed from a manual secreted behind the counter, turns out all Marti Pellow. That's Wet Wet Wet, not bone dry as requested. Housed in a former phone shop and imaginatively converted to a brief that likely read ‘Jack The Ripper meets Heidi in Chas (or Dave’s) auntie’s parlour’, this dinky dive ain’t half Mum & Dad; that’s ‘bad’ in local patois, I believe. With cocktail boy’s martinis now sorted, better rehearsed jobs such as R.C.R Kray - ‘a couple of rum ‘uns mixed up with Coke lime and spices’ - are far from criminal at £7.50.  Wines range from Petticoat Lane (sinkable reds from £12) to City Banker: Cristal is a snip £250, so treat yourself to a few bottles on the taxpayer, guys; you deserve it! Food is heavy on pie & mash, with the emphasis on ‘heavy’. Cunning! An evil steak and Stilton boulder leaves me too full to waddle off elsewhere. Downstairs, a cool cavern invites disco dancing and midnight mischief but I’m told Tower Hamlets has filed A&P’s late-night licence application under ‘red tape’. Perhaps they’re too caught up in ‘Hijabgate’, the controversy surrounding the ludicrous arches planned for Brick Lane?

Apples and Pears,  26 Osborn Street E1 7247 7717