Hobby Horse, Dalston

Any new bar that can persuade Pam Hogg to DJ - as the peerless purveyor of silver-spacesuits-to-the-deeply-hip recently did - is, de facto, happening. When it’s also located in downtown Dalston - still the centre of the universe, according to American style mags that haven't yet cottoned on to Plaistow's delights - it’s clearly the place to be. Picturing the look on Anna Wintour’s notoriously stony dial were she ever to park up her bony Burberry-clad bahookey at The Hobby Horse keeps me amused while chef rustles up our bargain scran - bangers, grouty mash and shrapnel masquerading as garden peas. Set by the Grand Union canal - whence its rickety furniture was presumably rescued - and painted a pukey puce, the Dorchester, it ain’t: I’m thinking more pint and a pickled ferret-style lounge in some clapped-out, cloth cap, County Durham dump. What the Prada classes will imagine are clothes fit only to sign-on in, the assembled punters perceive as cutting edge threads. The hooch is cheap but the Hobby Horse’s staff are about as on the case as My Little Pony. Me: ‘a Bloody Mary please.’ He: ‘no tomato juice.’ Me (pointing at carton) ’and that is?’ He: ‘tomato juice?’ Dalston: you gotta love it... unless you live in Chelsea in which case you haven’t read this far.

The Hobby Horse, 281 Kingsland Rd E2 07916 119 541