This Friday, 27 October, Ben Chapman, Brian Hannon, and Head Chef Ali Borer are to open Smoking Goat Redchurch Street, bringing their Thai barbecue bar to Shoreditch.
Inspired by Bangkok’s late night canteen spots, Smoking Goat Redchurch Street will reflect that atmosphere - icy beer, a mixture of comfort dishes from the woks, and spicy seafood from the open barbecues.
Formerly a family-run strip club, Chapman has designed the restaurant, drawing on the original features of the 1930s concrete building, and working closely with project manager Colin Harding and specialist woodworker Dan Preston.
The kitchen, led by Borer (pictured), will centre on carefully-sourced ingredients, with Thai herbs and vegetables grown in Cornwall and Dorset, and underrated, native seafood from Cornish waters. Luke Farrell has been researching, growing and supplying Thai vegetables for many years and his ideas and knowledge, as well as ingredients, inform Borer’s menu.
Smoking Goat and Kiln’s in-house butcher, Roberto, will join Ali in Shoreditch, bringing his whole Tamworth pigs, goats and game to be cooked atop charcoal pots and smokers.
The menu will largely comprise of a ‘Aharn Glam Lao’ (Drinking Food) section featuring Steamed Oysters with burnt chilli and fermented shrimp; Herbal blood sausage; Stir fried greens with salt fish; and spicy offal laabs. Larger dishes include; Soya braised chickens from Bangkok’s Chinatown; a Northern Thai turmeric variant on Massaman Smoked Goat; Smoked point end brisket; and Garlic chive hand made bouncy egg noodles.
Alongside these comforting dishes will be D’tom Yam Nam Sai’; an unapologetically sour, spicy cousin to creamy Tom Yam - and a staple of the Bangkok joints visited by Ali and Ben, made with sweet velvet crabs and cockles.
Borer said, “The atmosphere that made Thailand’s late night canteens so vibrant was in part, because everything was so cheap, everyone goes for any and all occasion, tucked in elbow to elbow on plastic chairs.
'One of the things we’ve learnt doing Offal Mondays at Smoking Goat is that putting out menus that are really good value results in a room of people that are just happy – they eat a bit more, drink a bit more and that’s the kind of place we’re hoping to build over the years at Redchurch Street.”
A shorter, daily changing wine list (by the glass) has been created by Zeren Wilson who has selected lesser known, great value wines from a range of regions and vintages. Interesting, but approachable pale ales, pilsners and sours are on tap and the back bar will be home to a variety of oft forgotten liquors, from Umoshi plum wine to Portuguese fig fire water and mescals.