Time to snuggle up

When the weather is filthy, only the chauffeur-driven arrive for dinner looking composed. There comes a point in the winter when biting winds and miserable rain leave you longing for Mummy and all you really want to do is eat comfort food.

Right now, red wine, mashed potato and large lumps of meat win favour with me over natty towers of fancy food in gilt-edged dining rooms.

Hubbub is the sort of place you look to in these months of need. The tiny restaurant/cafe/bar has been keeping the inhabitants of the Isle Of Dogs happy since the mid-Nineties. It is like a snuggly little cafe above an old church. The small, gloomy room manages to contain a bar, a restaurant and a loungey corner of marshmallowy sofas next to a large fishtank.

I took a born-and-bred Eastender, Grant, there for a bit of perspective. 'I can't believe it of the Isle Of Dogs,' he gasped. 'Out here you either have Canary Wharf-style new Docklands or proper old-school East End. Not this.'

There were people eating here, chilling there, and getting buzzed up at the bar - where one regular sat making overtures to a cheeky blonde. When we arrived there was a Friends-style gaggle of friends on the sofas drinking Budvar. They were there when we left - hunkered down with board games from a stack on top of the cigarette machine which indicated this kind of second-home activity is encouraged.

They have lit the place cheaply with cascades of fairy lights from Habitat and the dining room is so small you could fit it on a theatre stage for a play called The Cafe. At the ten tables there were largely 20- to 30-year-olds slugging wine and feeding up.

I ordered a Greek salad to start, which came with decent hot bread, but too much frizzy leaf. The East End chum had a spinach, feta and roasted red-pepper parcel with a tomato and oregano sauce. He said it was too much pastry and sauce with not enough filling, before gobbling it up merrily.

The mains menu had only seven items on it - sausages, steak, chicken, venison casserole, sea bass, pasta, Caesar salad. Every dish is based on a simple classic, but unfortunately usually with an extraneous flourish so although we were expecting things to be plainish and satisfying, that's not quite what we got. My steak with white wine and garlic sauce and leek and parsley mash could have done without the sauce, to be honest. The sauce was more of a gloopy, creamy topping. Grant's sea bass came with a chive crème fraîche and some veg. The crème fraîche swamped the fish. Puddings were good, but then they always are in these sorts of spots.

The staff wore cuddly jumpers and had little knowledge of the food, but lots of unconditional love. They would be disasters in a proper dining-room but I'm sure they will all find good jobs after graduation. I'd be happy to bring a regular date, my Mum or even a business contact here, but if I was the owner I might think about editing some ingredients out of the more florid dishes. This may sound rude, but when it comes to comfort food, no one gets in my way.

Hubbub
269 Westferry Road, E14 3AG