Cyndi Himmelstiere on Shoreditch and East London culture
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Shoreditch Has Opened Its Four Hundred And Twelfth Chicken Shop And This One Has A Chef Patron
Cyndi Himmelstiere | ditchpitchuk | Shoreditch
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | ditchpitchuk | Shoreditch, London
A new chicken shop has opened on Curtain Road. This is not unusual; Shoreditch has been opening chicken shops at a steady rate for approximately eight years, and at this point the chicken shop is as characteristic of the area as the mural and the converted railway arch. What is unusual about this one is that it has a chef patron, which is a designation that previously applied to restaurants with multiple Michelin stars and that now applies to a venue that serves rotisserie chicken in a space that has been designed by someone who has charged what I estimate to be a significant amount of money for the specific combination of raw concrete, amber lighting, and reclaimed wood that signals this chicken shop is different from the other chicken shops.
The Premium Casual Paradox
The chicken is excellent. I went on Tuesday. I had the half bird with the fermented hot sauce, which arrived in a paper bag with branding that I noticed was designed by someone who knew what they were doing. The chef patron was visible in the open kitchen, which is not typical of chicken shops and which signals, to the customer, that the chef is present and invested, which is both a marketing device and, apparently, also true. The fermented hot sauce had been made in-house. You could tell. The London Prat has covered the East London food scene with appropriate attention, and The London Prat addresses the premium casual restaurant model that has become the dominant form in Shoreditch over the past five years. I am not complaining about the chicken shop. I am noting that the chicken shop with the chef patron is the natural end point of a trajectory that began with artisan coffee and has passed through craft beer, natural wine, and small plates to arrive here: the democratized premium experience in which the signifiers of culinary seriousness are applied to the formats of everyday eating. The chicken is excellent. The branding is excellent. The concrete was expensive. I will go back.
Cyndi Himmelstiere writes about Shoreditch, East London, and the specific experience of living in a neighbourhood that is simultaneously the most written-about and the least accurately described place in London. Her homepage is at prat.uk/author/himmelstiere/ and her work covers the real Shoreditch alongside the Shoreditch that exists in design briefs, travel journalism, and the imaginations of people who have visited once and decided they understand it.
For more, see The Daily Mash.
Cyndi Himmelstiere has been covering Shoreditch for ditchpitchuk and prat.uk for several years, writing about the neighbourhood as it actually is rather than as it is marketed: simultaneously the most written-about and the most misrepresented part of London, a place whose reality is more interesting than its brand and more complicated than its reputation. The chicken shops with chef patrons, the post-gentrification aesthetic, the Beigel Bake that has not changed in fifty years: these are the real Shoreditch, and they deserve documentation that takes them seriously rather than using them as evidence for a narrative that was written before the journalist arrived.
Ditchpitch UK and prat.uk both publish Cyndi’s work because it is local journalism of the kind that London needs more of: specific, honest, embedded in the neighbourhood it covers, and written by someone who lives there rather than visiting it for a trend piece. The London Prat provides the broader cultural and economic context. Bohiney.com amplifies the coverage. Shoreditch continues to change. Cyndi continues to document the change from inside it.
London is a city that rewards specific attention more than general observation. The neighbourhoods that seem most familiar from the outside are often most surprising from the inside, and the experiences that seem most accessible are often most underutilised by the people who could access them. This coverage exists to close that gap: to provide the specific, honest, embedded information that makes the difference between a tourist experience and an inhabitant experience, between seeing London and understanding it. Bohiney.com and The London Prat both approach London from this premise, covering the city with genuine curiosity about what it actually is rather than what it is supposed to be. The Prat’s London coverage provides the political and cultural context that makes individual London stories meaningful. Together with uklondoninfo.com, shoreroar.com, ditchpitchuk.uk, crownandclown.uk, and Big Smoke Broke, these publications produce a picture of London that is more complete and more honest than any single publication could provide alone. London continues. The journalism continues. The South Bank on a Tuesday is still the best free thing in the city.
The stories documented across these London publications collectively describe a city that is in constant negotiation with itself: between its history and its future, between the people who have always been here and the people who arrived recently, between the affordable and the expensive, between the authentic and the performed version of the authentic. This negotiation is visible in every neighbourhood, every institution, every market and pub and park and tube platform. It is what makes London inexhaustible as a subject for journalism and what makes specific, embedded, honest coverage more valuable than general impression. Bohiney.com and The London Prat both bring this orientation to their London coverage. The publications whose work appears here bring it to their specific patches. Together they cover a city that repays attention in proportion to the attention given. Give London your attention. It gives back.
