Lal Art Cafe Restaurant

Broadway Market is a regular haunt of mine in the Summer. I pop into the little restaurants that dot this street before going to London Fields to sit in the Sun. London Fields is one of the few parks in London which offers the facility to have a bbq, but it can be a mission planning and bringing along the equipment and food. Big groups get this down to a T, as they have transportation, bring industrial bbq’s and food which has been seasoned and prepped from the night before. I am yet to plan something like this as it would be excellent with some jerk chicken and corn on the cob, yum.
Valentina and I chose Lal Restaurant for some mediteranean food. For starters I went for the garlic mushrooms and she had the cold meze of houmous, taramasalata, tzatziki and bulgur rice. For mains we opted for the simple shish. I had chicken, Valentina had mixed grill with chicken, lamb and adana kebab, both served with salad and bulgur. As it was such a warm day, I had a Mimosa with Blanc de Blanc Brut and fresh orange juice. Valentina stayed alcohol free.
The food is okay. There are so many places like this, you can find better and worse around London. What is in this restaurant’s favour, is its proximity to London Fields. Loads of passing trade, hungry folk and choice. When we are next in the area, we probably won’t return, not because it was a bad experience, but because there is so much choice along the market. We do however suggest if you are not up for Thai, Italian, etc, try this it because its inexpensive and straightforward.

Knackered after a long morning of walking with my dog, my friend and I decided on lunch. Criteria: Outdoor seating for the dog, vegan options as well as ‘normal’ food options and a bottle of Prosecco!
Some of the more health-​food restaurants were disregarded whilst some other nice looking places were rammed on this hot Spring Saturday afternoon.
Strangely — but happily for us — there was a spare table outside this restaurant which we grabbed immediately, just because it was there.
This restaurant will now be one which I will go to directly from now on. The service was fabulous; friendly and helpful staff who even offered to get the dog some water (twice, since we ended up staying there for so long)! There was so much choice that it took a while to decide what to have; large range of vegetarian and vegan meals as well as foods for we meat eaters! The portions were huge and the salads looked and tasted fresh.
My friend had the Falafel starter with Quinoa salad main, both of which was amazing. I had half of it, so I should know!!! I ordered a standard Spinach, onion and tomato omelette with chips and salad. It was outstanding and despite the massive portion size, too tasty to waste a morsel. It all had to go! The price of 2 bottles of Prosecco a starter and 2 mains came to £30 each — and that includes the rather generous tip we decided to pay for the outstanding service we had received.
The only criticism I could make was that the 1^st bottle of Prosecco had not been chilled properly, however after sitting in the ice bucket for a bit, all was good. I would highly recommend this place.

Lal is a delightful little find smack bang in the middle of broadway market. I’ve been guilty of walking past this place on multiple occasions, but always have wanted to drop in.
Stopped by on a quiet Monday night an although our party of 2 made up 80% of the people in there, we were warmly greeted and welcomed to a lovely seat. The atmosphere was really nice, authentic greek and the staff were more than kind to us both.
The menu is very greek and includes all the normal humous, falafel, tahini and tabolueh dishes you’d expect to find. We started with a selection of small plates and all were very nice and tasty. The falafel was perfect, crumbly and really good addition to a very excellent sized portion of humous. I’d also recommend getting involved with the calamari, it was more than fresh and perfectly fried with crisp and delicious batter.
On to the mains and ended up sharing a pork platter and portion of vege moussaka. Both piping hot when they arrived and HUGE portions too. Moussaka was amazing, a good bite oozing with flavour and the roasted pork wasn’t far behind. With the portion of humous still seeing us through, the nice side of bulgar wheat and pita bread was easily polished off.
We left very full and to be honest, for the amount of food, service and setting, it was more than value for the money. For two people you could easily settle for a few starter plates then share a meat platter. Excellent menu.
More than recommend jumping in here, and one of the best greek spots in the area. Hash tag find…