The Resy Guide to London’s Best Snacks

LA chef Julien Denis’ vegan take on the cheese and onion crisp at Facing Heaven in Hackney is in fact frizzled sheets of tofu skin. Dip into the lovely lurid green dip of fermented soy and scallion sauce to put a huge great grin on your face – perfect with a cold beer, or as part of an opening salvo at dinner.

Deep-fried dough balls or coccioli (translation: ‘cuddles’) are a fixture on the Trattoria Brutto menu, borrowed from Florentine institution I’Brindellone, which Russell Norman and team visited on a pre-launch study tour of the Tuscan city. They serve them hot with stracchino, a raw cows’ milk soft cheese, and wafer-thin slices of prosciutto crudo for you to fashion into dinky little down-in-one sandwiches. Best enjoyed with a £5 Negroni, while perched at the bar or as a prelude to dinner.

You’ll need thinking time at Quality Wines in Farringdon; time to peruse the wine list and scour the shelves in search of the bottle of your dreams; time also to choose from Nick Brahman’s magical southern European menu. Fill that time with a Negroni and a gilda, a Basque-style mini-skewer of olive and pickled guindilla chilli wrapped in an anchovy embrace. A hall of fame bite.

At the new Tamil Prince pub in Barnsbury, ex-Roti King chef Prince Durairaj reminds us just how well South Asian food goes with craft beer. Case in point: a cold pint of Harbour Brewing Co’s Pilsner and a tangle of crispy, crunchy okra fries.

The blackboard menu changes regularly at Naughty Piglets, Margaux Aubry and Joe Sharratt’s neighbourhood bistro and wine cellar in Brixton. There would be hell to pay if the ham croquette ever came off. It’s as classic as can be: crisp, round, hot, and oozing creamy, cheesy goodness.

A shout-out to the charcuterie at Manteca in Shoreditch. Their home-made mortadella is not the plasticky pink stuff you get at Asda. Chris Leach flavours his with 20 different spices, grinds it five times or more as they do in Bologna; and slices it into soft Percy-coloured folds of piggy pleasure. Good – no, great – with Lambrusco Rosso.

At chic neighbourhood restaurant Orasay in Notting Hill, Jackson Boxer does chips ‘n’ dips ‘n’ then some. Kettle chips, sour cream, and chives we know and love; but only JB would think to serve ‘em up with 30g Exmoor caviar and a side of fried chicken.

Take inch-thick slices of Dusty Knuckle sourdough; chargrill over an elaborate outdoor live fire set-up; drench with homemade ‘Marmite’ butter made with leftover yeast from beer making; and smother with a fistful of pecorino. That’s what chefs Andrew Clarke and Daniel Watkins do at Acme Fire Cult at 40FT Brewery in Dalston, and it goes down well with a pint of Disco Pils.

The savoury choux buns stuffed with chicken liver parfait are early frontrunners at Madina Kazhimova and Anna Dolgushina’s captivating Soho newcomer Firebird. Studded with plump golden raisins and toasted hazelnuts and sprinkled with Parmesan, they have complexity enough to stand up to even the wildest of natural wines on the progressive list.

The corn ribs at Fallow in St James’s – hot! crispy! spicy! – were a bestseller from the get-go. Fresh corn cut lengthways is blanched in British rapeseed oil then flash-fried and seasoned while piping hot with a generous hand. The seasoning is a proprietary blend of kombu seaweed, smoked paprika, toasted coriander and cumin. Toast’s pale ale pairs brilliantly.

Gabriel Pryce and Missy Flynn of Rita’s in Soho are London’s undisputed snackmasters. The hot bean devilled eggs, punchy with toban djan, have been a mainstay since their Hackney pop-up days; their jalapeño popper gildas with blue cheese-stuffed olives will blow your mind, and as for their tear-and-share garlic bread oozing green herby butter…Share? Ha!

Leave it to Chantelle Nicholson, reigning queen of zero waste, to turn leftovers into a thing of beauty. At her new place Apricity in Mayfair, she transforms yesterday’s sourdough into snappy shards of fennel-encrusted cracker for swiping through what she dubs ‘wasted dip’ of whatever wants using up. The carrot version is sweet and moreish.

A boiled egg of some form is never off the menu at pretty Café Deco. Sometimes they’re pickled, sometimes they’re devilled, but mostly they’re blanketed in mayonnaise and criss-crossed with salty, silvery anchovies. Perfect, really.

Churros, but make them cheesy. The curly-wurly coils of parmesan-enriched fried dough at Kudu in Peckham have proved so popular, they’re staying put. The dipping sauce of the moment is a silky miso mayo.

At Brunswick House in Vauxhall, the grilled potato bread is the one. Jackson Boxer’s nod to the famous original from Amass in Copenhagen, it involves seven-day fermented mash and an olive oil dough, slowly grilled and basted with brown butter. More butter on the side verdant with green garlic.