A Roman road with broth on it
Kingsland Road leaves the junction by St Leonard's, the old parish church of Shoreditch, and runs dead straight north towards Dalston. The straightness is Roman. This is the line of Ermine Street, the road out of London to Lincoln and York, and it still carries the A10 number and most of the traffic heading that way.
The first mile of it, from the church up to the canal at Haggerston, is where the Vietnamese kitchens stand one after another, close enough that some of them share a party wall. Families who came to Britain from Vietnam in the late seventies and the eighties settled in large numbers around Hackney, and the restaurants followed them. Locals call the stretch the Pho Mile. It is the most dependable weeknight dinner in Hoxton, and one of the few streets in London where you can choose where to eat simply by walking past the windows.
How the mile is laid out
The southern end, nearest the church and the Old Street offices, is the busiest and the quickest: rooms that turn their tables fast and fill with people who have walked up from the roundabout. Halfway along on the west side, the Museum of the Home sits back behind its lawns in the row of almshouses built for the Ironmongers' Company in 1714, and Hoxton station is tucked behind it on the viaduct. That is the natural middle of the walk.
North of the museum the shopfronts thin out, the rooms get smaller and feel more like neighbourhood places, and the road crosses the Regent's Canal just before Haggerston. There is usually less of a wait up here and fewer people photographing their bowls. If the first stretch is full, keep walking; the next door is rarely more than a minute away.
Choosing one on a weeknight
Look through the glass before you look at the menu. A room full of people eating quietly and quickly tells you more than a queue outside or a notice in the window. The menus on this road are long, sometimes very long, and numbered; there is no need to read every line. What matters is whether the kitchen is busy, whether the tables are being cleared rather than left, and whether anybody near the window is eating the thing you came for.
The real choice is between two kinds of room. One is small, brightly lit and furnished with hard chairs, and it will feed two people very well in forty minutes. The other is one of the larger dining rooms with softer light and more space between the tables, where the evening can take its time. For a first dinner with someone new the second is usually the better call. For the second or third evening, it is often the small bright room people remember.
Ordering for two
Resist two bowls of pho. Share one and put it in the middle of a spread: fresh summer rolls to start, a crisp banh xeo pancake to tear between you, a plate of something off the grill, and a bowl of bun, cold rice vermicelli with herbs and a sharp dressing, to go round. That way you see the range of the kitchen in one sitting, and nobody spends twenty minutes bent silently over a single broth.
The heat on this road is added at the table rather than in the kitchen. Chilli, lime, fresh herbs and sauces come on the side, and the right amount is whatever you want. If the menu starts to feel like homework, ask what the kitchen is proud of that evening and order that. It is a faster answer than any guide will give you, this one included.
After ten, and when to look elsewhere
The honest answer to where two can still sit down late is that the noodle kitchens keep earlier hours than the bars around them. Arrive by half past nine on a weeknight and you will have your pick of the road. After ten it varies door to door and night to night, and a look through the window or a quick call beats any printed list, because rooms here change their hours with the season and the staffing.
If the evening starts late, go north rather than south. The same road turns into Kingsland High Street in Dalston, where the Turkish charcoal grills are still serving long after the Pho Mile has stacked its chairs. Or split the night the other way: a drink first in one of the basements off the square, which our note on Hoxton Square bars goes through, then noodles, then the walk.
Company for a noodle supper
A dinner date on this road is the opposite of a tasting menu: loud, quick, entirely without ceremony, and dependent on whoever is sitting across the table. Bianka is anchored at the Hoxton end, asks sharp questions and is always the last to want the evening over. Tiffany is small framed, quick witted and has never once been the second to arrive. Molly, from the Mare Street side of Hackney, has a very low tolerance for pretending, which is exactly the right mood for a room with strip lights.
All three are on the brunettes shortlist, the largest on this site and the natural place to start for an evening in N1 or E2. Bianka and Molly also sit on the curvaceous list. Anyone else on the board will make the trip on exactly the same terms.
Lengths, and the walk that follows
Two hours at £500 is the right length for most evenings here: a table, the food, and a slow walk north to the canal or back south towards Shoreditch. Ninety minutes at £400 works when you are eating fast and heading home. Three hours at £700 lets the night pick up a second stop without anyone checking the time.
Tell the desk the restaurant, or just the stretch of road and the hour, and she will meet you at the table rather than on the pavement. Her journey is inside the figure, wherever she starts from. She is handed the fee in person when she arrives, and the whole ladder sits on the rates page.
Filed under: most of the names in this note also sit on the brunettes list in the shortlists.