Grace Dent reviews Disco Bistro

These cruel winter months should be spent seeking out fresh ways to have fun. Like visiting Disco Bistro in EC4, hidden away down the very Jack the Ripperesque Carter Lane, between Blackfriars and St Paul’s Cathedral.

Disco Bistro is a temporary affair in a pub, split between a first-floor dining room and a downstairs bar, offering two different menu styles. Downstairs, you can stuff yourself with a Disco burger made with Devon Ruby chopped steak (no horsemeat here), extremely covetable lobster corn dogs with Thousand Island sauce, or the crackled ‘fish dog’ made from ‘day boat fish’ crackled in pig skin.

I ate upstairs where the décor is eye-popping (taxidermy squirrels, 1980s reclaimed Routemaster bus seats), with French waitresses and retro pop music, and a delicate, unusual and ever-changing menu: young red deer with spiced pumpkin, wild cabbage, pickled pear and popped barley; onion and oyster mushroom pudding with chestnut, parsley and pennywort.

Right now, this area is something of a culinary wasteland. OK, aside from Strada opposite St Paul’s, which is always full of holidaying Italians staring in dark bewilderment at the penne. Oh, and that utterly charming café under the cathedral that I popped into for tea the other day and felt the wrath of God punishing me for all the mean things I wrote in this column last year by allowing me to buy a piece of lavender shortcake that boasted all the subtle flavouring of one of those floral disinfectant cubes that promises to work for 1,000 flushes. For a while there was also a nude nightclub in the area, which I often saw people sheepishly leaving early on Sunday mornings, though I cannot testify to the quality of its in-house buffet...

So the appearance of chef Carl Clarke in EC4 is a surprising treat. For foodies, Carl Clarke is a tantalising name, being something of a culinary eccentric, famed for pitching up, making temporary food mischief, then vanishing again leaving us all poorer, fatter and happier. Disco Bistro is Clarke’s first solo project, although prior to this you may have overheard people with cooler hair than you, who still haven’t approved your Instagram request, wanging on about Rock Lobsta, The English Launderette or the Jubilee tribute God Save the Clam.

Alternatively, you may be thinking at this point, ‘Oh, saints preserve me, a bloody “pop-up” down an alleyway with dead squirrels on the walls and bone marrow wrapped in pig skin and a Sex Pistols-influenced website. Gosh, I’m exhausted by this very London fandango already.’ To you people, I offer the parable of a week I recently passed in Suffolk, in a small town where the most scintillating place to eat was the chain restaurant Prezzo, for which one had to book heavily in advance and, once inside, look jolly grateful after being presented with a plate of meatballs that tasted like Whiskas Duck and Lamb, and then tip the waitress big as there was NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.

If you do head down to Disco Bistro, make sure you try the sticky fried chicken wings with rock perry vinegar. I’ve been attempting to conjure up words to describe their sharp vinegary wonder, rather than simply holding down the Alt key and bashing out symbols and exclamation marks. Please also try the cheddar and rye doughnuts. You won’t find them on any diet plan, but they’re comfortingly great. And be sure to treat yourself to the peculiar-looking but delicious fishy truncheon that is the lobster corn dog. Once tasted never forgotten. Well, OK, temporarily forgotten by me until some days after my visit to Disco Bistro, on which I was accompanied by the beautiful chef Gizzi Erskine and the restaurateur and bon vivant Jonathan Downey, who got me so squiffy that I turned up to film MasterChef the following day resembling something designed to terrify children in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. It may be January, but it’s well worth remembering that aside from smugness, there’s no actual prize for being boring.