TA-KO, Stoke Newington, food review: ‘It’s the little touches that count’
A selection of the restaurant’s menu. Photograph: courtesy TA-KO
This is a tale of food, fire and flood.
Let me explain. My predecessor reviewed TA-KO in 2018 when it was already doing a roaring trade in literary-themed cocktails and a fiery combination of Asian-Mexican influences, focused around the little cylindrical taco (did you just get the name?).
But now for the flood.
Nine months ago, a leak at the restaurant caused devastation after it trickled away for two days (unhelpfully over the weekend) and eventually led to the ceiling collapsing.
But from the sludgy ashes, a phoenix was born.
Owners Mike, Niall, and Stuart rolled up their sleeves, teaching themselves to weld in the process, and reshaped the venue from scratch before reopening in March.
Hence our return.
Red 1950s glass lamps cast their sexy brothel-ish glow over modernist rattan chairs, mossy blue half walls and slatted wood designs.
A bar built for downing whiskey sours stretches away in one corner and distressed artworks meld into the stylish background.
Nice gaps between the tables mean you can cackle and glug away to your heart’s content (or at least we did).
The Melonballer is one of many cocktails on offer. Photograph: courtesy TA-KO
The cocktail menu has matured since 2018, as have the prices. It’s still impressive in length but with fewer gimmicks and a better guiding hand towards its new liquid pleasures.
Banana Boulevardier? Fortified orange wine swirls with banana liquor, a sweet shop twist, then bourbon and Campari microwaves in your mouth with the expected Negroni maturity.
A Recharged Sbagliato has gone the full hog (Sbagliato meaning mistake in Italian) – a luminous pink spritz in a wine glass, with two versions of Prosecco.
Mandarin and Lemongrass does precisely what it says on the almost endless fold-out menu, a Margarita with duo muzzle shots off its title ingredients.
Cherry Club in the sours section is a frothy, chilled little number with the tang of gin and the red stain of cherry purée – a world of flavour and fun in hues of freshly flowered fuchsias.
Lastly, if drinking cocktails wasn’t rich enough in this current economic climate we have the Bijou Sour, a gin concoction made by oligarchs (or the people who get them drunk), with fortified riesling and green chartreuse balancing out the spirit’s tart, lemon-laced smile.
You might have noticed that we sampled much on the drinks menu, and in the sexily lit gloom, that could have been it: an evening consisting of one long whiff of angostura bitters. But there is food, and it was much needed I can tell you.
The appetisers, sides and dessert are where we got really hot under the pig’s collar (it will make sense later, I promise).
Ceviche Tostada has sea bass and pickled watermelon sitting pretty together on a fragile black shelf, a crunch mixing with the acerbic fleshiness of the lemon-cooked fishy flesh. J’adore!
Kare Kare is Filipino peanut goodness with added almond butter and a slice of crowning beef. This chatty little canapé and its hash brown-like crispy rice is somehow comforting. If only we got more than three of these heavenly little mounds.
The MSG fries (famous apparently) are wonderfully cooked, with kampot pepper mayo and nori giving an Asian flash to the disks of carbohydrates. These can be dunked in either the inspired blackberry Sriracha (my new favourite condiment), or nahm Jim, the punchy Thai sea-laced sauce.
The TA-KO team. Photograph: courtesy TA-KO
We round out the first act of the meal with Asian slaw (thankfully heavy on the daikon and gochujang mayo).
There is also cucumber salad for the vegans, and kimchi and chilli corns for the non-vegans.
Dessert is a mochi cake with its usual breast implant consistency (can you tell I’m a sceptic?), coconut sweetness and fresh kaffir lime leaf.
The other (non-vegan) option is Dough-Jo’s, a dull-sounding thing that actually beguiles us with a flash of imagination and oddness – rare nowadays. Curly Guinness World Record-holding toenails of batter, ready to scratch around in the headache-inducing palm sugar salted caramel sauce. They were worth every throbbing temple vein on the walk home.
The Mexican staple that gives the restaurant its name cost around £5 each, and three per person is recommended.
I would say at least five tacos per person would be best, as these are unsharable and on the small side, but then maybe years of reviewing food has increased my greed and elongated my stomach.
The VE jackfruit with shiitake and mango bursting out for a tropical hello works well.
Others, such as the cauliflower (only veggie), prove too lumpy and large to fit within the shell.
The pork, from the collar of the pig (which I didn’t realise they had), melts in your mouth as kimchi provides some blow-and-go.
But a totally understandable mix-up between the chicken and sea bass illustrates an issue with these bread circles themselves.
Maybe this is the ongoing debate between flour and corn tacos (at least your Coeliac friend can eat everything on the menu), but the distinctive taste rather overpowers the exciting ingredients ranging from New Mexico to Tokyo all piled onto top.
TA-KO may fuse the seemingly unfuseable, may save the sunken, and may mix a mean old drink.
But interestingly, it’s the things to the side of the main menu, unmentioned among the punny names, that really gratify.
Little under-appreciated touches that keep your tongue and head metaphorically on their toes.