Gustav Temple takes a saunter down memory lane to the nineties with Matthew De Abaitua.
One can imagine Leadenall Market during the time of Charles Dickens, bustling with butchers, costermongers, blacksmiths and the odd lonely lawyer’s scrivener looking for love among the packing crates. Leadenhall’s Victorian cobbles stood in for Diagon Alley in the first Harry Potter Film, in which Hagrid and Harry enter the Leaky Cauldron Pub through a blue door. Oddly, we couldn’t find a pub with that name anywhere in the market.
Today Leadenall market has been turned into a sort of covered village, with branches of upmarket clothing outlets rubbing shoulders with sushi bars and trendy pubs. The customers look more like characters from a Martin Amis novel than one of Dickens’, the sharp-jawed men marching about purposeful and jacketless in the midsummer heatwave, the women trying carefully not to spill their takeaway miso soup down their expensive blouses. There is the buzz of the City of London but not the dress code. Unlike a Martin Amis novel, no-one is taking a dangerously long lunch. The many tables on the cobbled areas outside the pubs are virtually empty.
My dining companion and I are here to try and fix that, at least partially. Matthew De Abaitua, former deputy editor of the idler Magazine, author of several science fiction novels and a memoir of working as Will Self’s factotum in his youth, has agreed to take time out of his busy schedule as head of department at Essex University to sample the delights of Leadenall Market on a Tuesday afternoon.
Our hosts are the revamped premises of The New Moon, a large building with a traditional pub downstairs and a restaurant upstairs. As soon as we ascend the stairs to the dining quarters, we are stepping back into the nineties. The décor is unassuming yet studied; dado rails separate walls in a sludgy shade of pink, hatstands stand to attention, their services unrequired. They are purely decorative objects hinting at a not-so-distant past that is still within our grasp. De Abaitua comments on the menu boasting self-conscious 90s-style revivals of old-school classics such as Croque Monsieur, Baked Camembert and Chicken Club Sandwich. Only the ‘Plant-powered cheeseburger’ reminds us that we are in the third decade of the 21st century. Even the beer is oddly out of kilter with the times – instead of a thousand citrussy pale ales from micro breweries, there is only lager and one cask ale. Perhaps we are closer to the nineties than we thought. Perhaps we should have taken Keith Talent’s advice and plumped for the lager – more reliable cos it’s kegged, innit?
We opted for a glass of Gavi instead, to wash down our respective starters of cured salmon and mango tartare, and toasted crumpet with oyster mushrooms and Ssamjang sauce. Talk inevitably turned to lapsed City dress codes: Matthew had counted just three men wearing ties during his journey from Hackney to the City on the Underground. He waved a hand around the off-pink room and pointed out that there were as many City chaps in here wearing ties. The heatwave provided a partial excuse, but standards were clearly dropping and those hatstands were unlikely to see much use, before the next restaurant interior trend wiped them out entirely.
Our main courses came, de Abaitua having chosen pie of the day (smoked haddock and salmon pie served with Burford brown egg, toasted lemon & chive crumb and seasonal greens) and I, acknowledging the double helix of the eighties revived in the nineties, plumped for the Chicken Kyiv, with only the spelling of the Ukrainian capital decrying its place in the 2020s.
The food, while nothing outstanding, was wholesome and generously portioned. The New Moon has positioned itself as a stop-off for the weary upper-tier office worker. What we observed at the other tables was the gentle conversation among colleagues who have risen slightly above the miso soup on the go level, and who probably appreciate the more relaxed dress codes that allow them to dine in shirtsleeves. When we popped across the cobbles to another pub for a few post-prandials, we perched around a barrel on metal stools and observed the ebb and flow of City life while discussing the future of print publishing, and whether hatstands will ever see a genuine comeback.
The New Moon, Leadenhall Market, London EC3V ODN newmoonleadenhall.com
