Please note, since this review was published some menu details and prices have changed. Time Out Food editors, March 2018.
On the weekend, there’s a doorman outside this painfully hip ‘concept’ bar on the Dalston strip. That’s quite fun if you’re going for a cocktail, but makes taking a date for dinner here feel a bit embarrassing. Originally, Untitled just did drinks – extremely experimental, brilliant ones at that – but they’ve now added a menu of Japanese small plates.
At lunchtime, there are noodles and they’re excellent. My slippery, thick, cold udon struck the perfect balance between sharp yuzu kick and sesame umami wallop. It was noodle nirvana and made me long to go back for dinner.
Sadly, that dinner was disappointing. There’s a menu of 11 small plates and everything I tried was minuscule and more than a bit pretentious. The herb salad came with wet tofu and shisho pickled pear with dried seaweed felt like swallowing two bites of candied air. Chicken wings were marginally more substantial, but overly sweet. Grilled edamame came speared, awkwardly, on two metal barbecue skewers. There was also an annoying waiter who, when I ordered a bottle of house wine – which, by the way, cost £34 – asked with a semi-straight face whether he should bring an extra glass for himself.
Admittedly, you can order the entire menu for just over fifty quid, but at these sizes, you’d have to. Stick to lunch.