NOTE: Rök Shoreditch has sadly now closed.
Dear Sweden,
Thank you for the safety match; ABBA, the adjustable spanner; Vikings; Ikea; the blowtorch; and your general contribution to making people more attractive.
Your gifts to society have been duly noted.
However they’ve also just been entirely eclipsed by the arrival of Rök: a quaint, unassuming, Nordic smokehouse and late night bar located inside an old café in East London. Here you’ll uncover chefs using techniques like brining, pickling and smoking in order to serve up an array of Northern European dishes, many of which feature meats that’ve been smoked by British Charcuterie Cobble Lane Cured, and then finished off on Rök’s custom built, charcoal-fuelled BBQ.
We have three people to thank:
1) Charles, whose parents moved from Poland to England, regularly selling their traditional pickled, smoked and cured goods on Brick Lane; and whose grandmother invented recipes that have been used for all of the restaurant’s pickled goods.
2) Frida, whose dad likes to fire up his barbecue all year long despite living in Northern Sweden, where it’s really cold. Frida is responsible for Rök’s design, so we have her to thank for the credibly rustic appearance of the wooden bar… behind which, importantly, you’ll find amaretto and pistachio liqueur sours.
3) Matt, whose parents have absolutely nothing to do with Rök, barbecuing or Sweden. He came to Rök from the kitchen of Ollie Dabbous’ Barnyard in order to create a menu that includes culinary treats like smoked short rib of beef with birch syrup; wood-roasted peach with laphroaig honey and almond whisky; and flame roasted duck with lingonberry jam.
We’d like to thank Sweden for that, too.
NOTE: Rök Shoreditch has sadly now closed.
Rök | 26 Curtain Road, EC2A 3NY
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Carpe Diem!