Grace and Flavour: Crate Brewery

There’s something magical about balmy, sticky London summer nights, wandering back from bars like the newly opened Crate Brewery in Hackney Wick, Olympic-land, carrying one’s shoes, talking rubbish, playing ‘spot the cheeky fox’, making promises to friends drunk that one won’t honour sober (‘yesh, we should TOTALLY climb Scafell Pike’) and earwigging on impromptu house parties in a dozen different languages. The constant July rain made me so grumpy I’d started to resemble a sort of livid claymation Jason and the Argonauts villain, but whenever the sun shines I re-remember why I’ll never quit this city.

The Stratford environs, where I live (sort of round the back of the Velodrome, just south of the high jump crashmats), is terrifically good fun right now. Moan at me about the Olympics if you want but don’t be offended by a swift karate chop to your jowls. You bore me. Right now my postcode is full of athletes (I directed Team Ecuador to Superdrug this morning) and happy tourists and, due to G4S’s failings, I also have to suffer small gangs of handsome, well-behaved, gentlemanly young soldiers in full uniform eating in the local Wagamama and calling me ‘Ma’am’. Gosh it sucks.

Being a seemingly lone voice of media Olympics non-gloom I’ve spent this week fielding TV invites — including Newsnight — to represent ‘people who aren’t whining twonks’. In fact, as I type, I’m in Trevor Sorbie getting my hair tamed and antlers filed for an appearance beside mega-cerebral vision of hotness Emily Maitlis, which will be a humbling experience. It’s actually easier to be on with Paxman and a load of stuffed shirts where simply having had a stand-up wash at a sink in St Pancras and a squirt of Impulse make you win in the glamour stakes.

Foodwise in East London right now — Hackney Wick, Stratford, Leyton, Dalston — it’s a bit like living in a delicious, bum-fattening game of The Sims. Every time I blink someone’s grabbed an old building or shop, sloshed 20 litres of white emulsion over it and printed a small-choice but perfectly formed menu. There are so many exciting places: Lardo in Hackney (disco ball oven); Rita’s and White Rabbit in Dalston; and Crate Brewery and Pizzeria — serving its own beer — which opened its doors just last week.

Crate Brewery is within sneezing distance of the Olympic Stadium, a stone’s throw from the temporary BBC Olympics studio, beside the freshly dredged, de-shopping-trolleyed canal where I often intend to go jogging but then don’t (you can’t rush into this exercise lark without consulting a GP and mine seems terribly busy).

Crate Brewery is part of a brand-new cultural centre called The White Building. I remember ‘The White Building’ before the developers arrived — and Olympics legacy funding glitter was sprinkled on it — when it was a creepy, burned-out husk of a factory covered in graffiti. In fact, so utterly the opposite of ‘white’ was it that when I first heard the new name I nearly laughed up spleen. But in its defence, it was the venue of the occasional legendary illegal rave, one of which I chanced upon at 11am while out getting papers, discovering a few hundred travellers and a variety of dogs all jumping up and down to Ozric Tentacles.

It’s all change down here now. There’s a microbrewery with an outside area to sit and sun oneself with a pint of Crate Golden Ale. Or the more feisty 5.8 per cent Crate IPA, which can make a lot of clientele seem perilously attractive, so proceed with romantic caution. The Monteith’s Crushed Apple Cider is too bloody drinkable by half.

Soak up the booze with Crate’s outstanding pizzas. The menu is limited — just pizzas — but glorious. I woke up dreaming of the crispy, slightly sweet Middle Eastern lamb with pinenuts and subtle pieces of apricot. And the sweet potato with Gorgonzola and walnuts. The laksa chicken and the sage and truffle potato passed by in a blur of dripping cheese happiness. If anyone is in any doubt about the Olympic effect, they should watch me trying to fit into something size zero.

Crate Brewery, Unit 7, The White Building, Hackney Wick, E9 (cratebrewery.com)