What on earth is a EUNFO restaurant?

Plus: eating rabbit at The Rabbit, inside new Leyton Midland wine bar Swirl, Leytonstone's tastiest potatoes (guess where), Blondie's kids policy, Jannah's best-value dish - and a Black Friday offer

I learnt a new acronym in The Guardian’s comments section the other day. Leyton-dwelling food critic Grace Dent was reviewing Soho’s Noodle Inn, an uber-popular spot for which queues start building at 1130am. Once inside this “military operation”, she wrote, you soon get the feeling you’re outstaying your welcome, “the customer merely a unit that needs moving through the system.”

To which one reader, RangsitBob, responded: “I avoid EUNFO (Eat up, now fuck off) restaurants. I don’t mind ones with generous time slots, but I will not be coming back if you ask me 'would you mind taking dessert in the bar'.”

Having done a light Google, it seems the commenter has coined this nifty little phrase as I couldn’t find another mention of it anywhere else online. And it made me think: are there any EUNFO restaurants in Leyton and Leytonstone? I’ve certainly been to plenty in Soho or Shoreditch - and much as I love Whitechapel’s legendary Tayyabs, that place is so rammed they’d happily throw you the bill the minute you sit down.

Over our way it’s more relaxed, of course, and hospitality folk are keen on return custom. However, the most popular joints increasingly have to juggle streams of customers - say, Panda, Burnt Smokehouse and Homies On Donkeys to name three - requiring a delicate balancing act.

The latter is often rammed at peak times. While I’m a fan (and a regular), when it first opened, I remember trying to get a table on a Saturday afternoon and being offered one fifteen minutes before the kitchen stopped serving. Sure, we agreed, as long as that works for the chefs; as it turned out, the kitchen was over-stretched and there was a long delay for our mains - but then we weren’t turfed out, either. It was simply a case of new-opening teething issues.

On each subsequent visit I’ve only ever walked in, rather than booked - and this was the case the other evening. Arriving at about 9pm, service was swift, but rather than needing to return the table for another sitting, it felt like the kitchen was winding down.

That aside, on this visit the tacos were, in fact, the best yet: the “Homies classic” of king prawns in spicy tomato sauce was juicily delicious, while the umami hit of bavette, sliced pink, with its fiery roasted jalapeno relish, sweet onion and coriander, was outstanding. And I’ll say it again (as I did in my initial review): those roasted potatoes, seasoned perfectly, are some of the best spuds I’ve ever eaten (just forget about the salt content).

So is this a EUNFO? Not in my experience, although some readers might beg to differ; as with all restaurants, we can all hold quite distinct (sometimes unmoveable) opinions. But ultimately, dining out is surely just about clear communication between front-of-house and punter. And on this level it succeeds.

Have you ever experienced a local EUNFO? Pray tell.

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Welcome to this week’s issue. Did you catch Francis Road’s Christmas Lights switch-on last night? Maybe you even managed to conquer the queue for Dom’s Subs? We arrived just as drag queen Chamonix was getting the tots to sing along to a few Christmas numbers, but it was so cold we soon retreated to the bar at Dreamhouse.

Once again, thanks so much to the amazing community that’s building every week on the free mailing list: now nearly 4,000 of you, it’s validating to see hundreds of new sign-ups each month.

It is, of course, Black Friday: unlike some global titles, as a freelance writer I sadly can’t offer £1 for 4 months, but I can pitch in with a 15% discount on annual subscriptions this weekend, bringing the cost down to £38.25 per year, which works out as £3.19 a month - or just 73p a week. 

So, if you’ve been umming and ahhing about whether to subscribe, and are hungry for longer local reads, more opinionated food & drink stories, unbiased restaurant reviews and foodie gossip I’d love you to take this offer up: you have three days to redeem it here. Offer ends Monday December 2nd.

Plus, you’ll be helping provide free high quality local journalism to those who can’t afford to take out a paying subscription, and also helping the OG site Leytonstoner.London remain free to all. Here’s why I had to install a paid upgrade to keep this newsletter going. 

There are other ways to support this newsletter too, by hitting the heart button (yep, for the all-important Substack algorithms), sharing it with your friends and neighbours, or even just donating the price of a coffee. And limited concessionary rates are available to those on a tight budget (email stephen@leytonstoner.london).

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Anyway, on with the rest of today’s edition. Here’s what you can expect:

• Eating rabbit at The Rabbit. Yep, after that reader’s poll, I ordered the Leytonstone High Road restaurant’s mighty signature dish. And then…I returned two days later for brunch. Find out why below.

• Swirl opens: an exclusive peek inside Leyton Midland’s new natural wine bar, which launched last night. And it’s pretty darn gorgeous.

• In a new streetfood section, I sample Stratford’s D & K Gambian stall, and budget rice boxes at Leytonstone newcomer Jannah.

• Blondie's new kids’ policy - debriefed.

• Tamping Grounds on Francis reviewed. What’s your favourite coffee in the area?

• A new Observations column, including Libertalia’s cosy winter look and perhaps Leyton’s least desirable £50 (£50 no less!) Xmas set menu.

• Another packed news and gossip section, featuring Leytonstone’s new Mudd Club Studio and other new openings and Christmas markets aplenty

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Eating rabbit at…The Rabbit

The other week, I asked subscribers which restaurant they’d like me to visit next: 43% said Leytonstone High Road’s “international” dining room, The Rabbit. So dutifully, I swung by on a midweek lunchtime.

I must admit, I was curious. The enigmatic venue opened two years ago now, with no menu at the entrance but pavement chalkboards displaying offers - a glass of wine with a main, or 10% off food after 6pm - which somehow still hadn’t tempted me in. Though it plays down its menu at street level, on Instagram its dishes appear enticing, hashtagged as “Local ArtFood Adventures” - rather than just dinner.

Stepping into the interior, by day it’s airy due to a huge skylight, adorned with artificial foliage. It’s a loosely designed space of mismatched chairs, houseplants, globe lighting and wooden floors - busy enough too, generally a mix of chattering older residents and solo lunchers like myself.

The menu is exhausting to read through: pages of brunch options, from bagels to eggs florentine, omelettes and sandwiches, as well as soups, burgers, salads and pastas. There’s a list of fish and seafood, and another of meaty mains, including confit duck with sour cherry sauce, risottos, sirloin steak, chicken livers and lamb shank. The chef has “fifteen years’ experience in the field, and recently came from a two-month course from Italy, Perugia area,” the team told me via DM.

I hovered over the many options, drawn to the bass, duck or lamb - but in the end had to order the eponymous rabbit. Perhaps this was an attempt to make peace with my memories of a) my favourite childhood leporine movie, Watership Down and b) eating a rather stringy version of the animal in Italy some years ago.