Rök Restaurant, Islington

This is the second Rök Restaurant, opening off the back of their phenomenal success in Shoreditch, which is adored by Jay Rayner and Grace Dent.

Rök is Swedish for smoke, and that is how the food in this Scandi-touched restaurant is cooked, and the drinks by top bartender Matt Whiley too.

All the produce is sourced in Britain, but they specialise in brined and cured meats, cooked on fire alongside fermented and preserved seasonal produce.

The Nordic menu is from Barnyard and Aveqia’s Matt Young, with a few traditional additions. The meat, supplied by quality curing-house, Islington’s Cobble Lane Cured, will be smoked in the on-site barbecue.

There will be a new menu with dishes like fennel cured hot smoked sea trout and dar chocolate mousse with express sorbet and malted crumb, as well as a few golden oldies from Shoreditch, including scallop, nduja and seaweed, and wood smoked peach with Laphroaig honey, which Grace Dent said would be “an excellent Blade Runner-style test of whether you’re a human being or not.”

Rök joins Berber & Q in taking advantage of London’s enjoyment of barbecue, and we trust Matt Young to make this stylish, decently-priced restaurant a source of pleasure for Islington foodies everywhere.