Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
It has lived many lives, Shoreditch. Birthplace of English theatre; slum star of Charles Booth’s poverty maps; flame to the swastika’d moths of the Blitz. In the 1950s and 1960s gangsters moved in, usurped by the YBAs in the 1980s and 1990s. The hipsters had their way with it for a while — remember the Cereal Killer Café? Grim — until the Essex lads jostled in on Friday nights. What was cool became cringe, Shoreditch in its Air Max-and-Lynx Africa phase.
