Café Oto E8

London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
East London: Other locations — Dalston

Bar
18-22 Ashwin Street E8 3DL
email info@cafeoto.co.uk web http://cafeoto.co.uk tw Cafeoto
Open 0930 (1030 Sat-Sun)-1730 (1630 if no evening event; also most evenings from 2000 with admission charge). Children welcome.
Cask beers None, Other beers 3 keg, 10 bottles (Kernel, Pitfield’s), Also Japanese drinks, malts
Food Breakfasts, wrap/salad lunches, cakes and pastries, Outdoor Tables on street. Disabled toilet
Experimental, jazz, folk, rock music most evenings

Café Oto, London E8

Developing in the 19^th century along the main Cambridge Road, Roman Ermine Street, from what were once two small villages, Dalston became an outlier of the poor East End in the 20^th century. Its traditional character is still much in evidence on celebrated Ridley Road market, but a longstanding arty and alternative edge has recently developed into more obvious gentrification, spurred by regeneration projects like Gillett Square with its ‘culture house’ and jazz club and major improvements in transport brought by the London Overground extensions. Another aspect of the area’s changing face, only a few steps from Dalston Junction Overground, is the Print Works complex, originally built for the Hackney Gazette but renovated in the late 2000s by the Bootstrap Company, a local regeneration and development charity dating back to the 1970s. Besides solar powered workspaces for creative enterprises, a roof garden and a gallery, the buildings house Café Oto, one of London’s more unusual music venues, with a programme of experimental, avant garde and more left field rock, folk and acoustic music – and a surprisingly nifty range of craft beer.

Four choices come from the Kernel brewery include one brewed specially for the venue, and the rest is made up of interesting stuff from Pitfield’s, including their historic recreations. Cristal Alken and Palm amber ale from Belgium grace the keg taps, and a supplementary lineup of sake, shochu, plum wine and Yamazaki malt whisky reflects a notable Japanese influence. During the day this attractive post-industrial space is open as a chilled out café, dishing up simple breakfasts and lunches on weekdays and snacks and pastries at weekends, before reopening most evenings for bands. Midori, one of the managers, tells me the jazzier the music, the more popular the better craft beers.

Visitor note. Nearby Fassett Square was the original model for Albert Square in long running BBC soap EastEnders.

Overground Dalston Junction, Dalston Kingsland Cycling LCN+10