Jolene restaurant review: I’m begging you, please take my money

A changing list of dishes is written up on a blackboard, the wines are natural and the pastries are as good as any in London, says Ed Cumming

Its austere walls ought to be ugly but in fact lend a kind of industrial-cosiness (Patricia Niven)

Primeur and Westerns Laundry, two restaurants by Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim and David Gingell, have become north London stalwarts in no time at all.

For media types between Barnsbury and Hackney they are fancy canteens, serving “modern European” plates – bit of Britain, bit of France, bit of Italy – and hip natural wines.

Primeur is located an old garage just south of Stoke Newington’s Clissold Park, Westerns Laundry is in a – have a guess – old launderette by the Emirates stadium. I’ve never had a bad meal at either, had many excellent dishes, and I never mind going when summoned, but I wouldn’t organise my own events there.

The bill is always right at the upper end of what I’m prepared to pay. Despite excellent cooking I usually find myself mentally shaking my fist and thinking “you’ve got away with it today, but next time it’ll be different”. Then I go back.

Now there’s a third site, Jolene, round the corner from Primeur in Newington Green, and it might be the best yet. Newington Green! My first journalistic assignment was here. I was spending a few weeks of the summer at the Camden New Journal. It’s a terrific local paper and they don’t have enough staff not to give the interns interesting things to do. Someone thrust a notebook in my hand and slung a camera round my neck. “There’s been a drive-by in Newington Green. Go and talk to some people about it.” Off I trotted. Looking back 12 years later, that was the closest I came to real reporting. Oh well.

Perfect toasties like this are on offer at various times of the day

The point is that Newington Green is not what it was. It’s like Williamsburg now. You can’t cross the road without bumping into provenance and sourcing. There’s the superior tapas restaurant Trangallan, the well priced tasting menus at Perilla, natural wines at Yield.

At Bergen House there is one of the most blatant rip-offs in London, where they offer “a banging steak and fries” exactly the same menu as Le Relais de Venise L’entrecote, except with more offensive descriptions, including “dench Bergen sauce”. Jokers.

Named after the Dolly Parton song, Jolene is an all-day restaurant and bakery, and obviously the work of the same people as Primeur and Westerns Laundry.

The killer difference between Jolene and their other restaurants is I have never left resenting the bill

Its austere walls, of white-painted breeze blocks and mottled grey hydrolime, ought to be ugly but in fact lend the room a kind of industrial-cosiness, bright in the daytime and cosy at night, the kind of design that requires a sharp eye for detail and a keen sense of hospitality.

A changing list of dishes is written up on a blackboard, the wines are natural. The pastries are as good as any I’ve had in London, especially a pain au chocolat of pure butter and flakiness and chocolate.

At various times of the day between brunch and dinner I’ve eaten eggs with punchy hot nduja, a perfect cheese and ham toastie, its exterior a shell of dark-golden crunch, sopressa and lardo and other fine-sliced meats, tagliatelle with fennel sausage ragu, roast chicken, croquettes.

At the all-day restaurant and bakery, the service is confident and charming

The service is confident and charming, too; the staff seem rightly proud of the dishes they’re putting down on the table.

The killer difference between this and their other restaurants is I have never left resenting the bill. The prices are only a tiny bit higher at Westerns Laundry: 50p here, a pound there, but with so many dishes you want to eat it adds up.

Here you could come for eggs and coffee for not much more than you’d pay at a greasy spoon of the “old Newington Green” variety. If the other two venues were a long-term ruse to make the new venture seem like excellent value, it has worked. Jolene, I’m begging you, please take my money.

Should you go: yes
Would I go back: yes