What's in a place name

My education was not 'finished' in Switzerland. Instead, I became a waitress in bars, clubs and restaurants of every type including cool cafes that paid tuppence an hour, and a life-affirming role backstage at a Little Chef.

Waitressing, like being a stay-at-home wife, is quite a fun job if you know it's not forever. The two cheery Aussies working at The Talbot seemed to think this too. They were chatty, helpful, chilled-out. They were totally unshitty. Unshitty means displaying no annoyance or pomposity in your engagement with the customer. It's quite rare throughout the restaurant world.

The Talbot's interior is the cleanest and most comfortable example of the gastropub vernacular I have seen for a while. I won't bore you by listing the bare boards, old sofas, exposed brickwork and salvaged tables and chairs - suffice to say they were exemplary, particularly a table for eight in the window with lots of velvet dining chairs - a great spot for Sunday lunch.

The Talbot's in gentrified Hackney. Some say De Beauvoir Town abutts Blairite Islington, others say Turkish Dalston. We saw council estates and posh family homes in De Beauvoir. It's London, basically.

The bar is well stocked and they suggest interesting things to do with various tequilas on the drinks menu.

The owner is clearly more of a drinker than an eater. The food's rubbish in parts, good in others - largely it satisfies the 'I've had a pint and I'm hungry now' need.

The menu is divided into two set selections of tapas (meat and veggie) for under a tenner and a selection of meats from the chargrill. A meat tapas plate includes couscous with peppers (underseasoned, bland), olives (good quality mixture), hummus (the most tasteless ever), chorizo (cooked, hot, fine), tortilla (bad, too much milk, cooked in a smelly, meaty pan), and two slices of cold roast pork (Sunday lunch leftovers style) and the first of many portions of a pleasant garnish of green beans and dressed salad leaves.

From the grill, Sibling Ben took a steak sandwich in a huge slab of uninteresting focaccia - not great taste, leathery but not obscenely so. He liked the fat chips, sweet and dark fried skin-on spud with an eggy aioli. Sibling Amy liked her fishcakes, crisply breaded, very sloppy and spuddy inside, but with plenty of haddock and herb flavour.

I sent my seared tuna back for being utterly well done. It came back pink with masses of the aforementioned salad. It was fine, forgettable. Not bad. Not good. We woofed two excessively sweet cheesecakes made with Toblerone, cookies and cream and then spent all night by a massive fire in comfy sofas.