Local food fanatic James Cooper, 29, is munching through his mission to sample all of Hackney’s diverse cuisine by experiencing every eatery on Kingsland Road. James said of his endeavour, “When friends used to ask me for local recommendations, I realised that could only name three restaurants. It was not a balanced viewpoint – the only way to be sure is by visiting them all.”
The Hackney resident and digital advertising professional noted the mile-and-a-half stretch of 68 restaurants and cafés before deciding to take up the challenge in May. He is blogging about each experience, including Vietnamese at Song Que and Turkish at Uludag and has remarked online “you can see the whole world on one street.”
He added: “There is a huge range of cultures in the East End of London and I love that … I have got 18 or 19 reviews up on my blog now; when I started out I counted 68 places to visit but since then about three more have opened up and another couple have shut – its quite difficult to keep up.”
Cooper has a lot of experience with food. Having grown up around food, his mother ran a restaurant in Glastonbury while he was a child, even so, his journey has still thrown up the odd surprise.
Almost a third of the way through the feat along the road between Dalston and De Beauvoir, Mr Cooper acknowledges that there is still a long way to go.
James Cooper is chronicling his quest at http://e8te.wordpress.com/
