Hot plate: the small spot on Caledonian Road is worth the hype
(Picture: Matt Writtle)One of the first things I noticed on shuffling into Hawker’s Kitchen was the tinsel. A ragged gold strip of it, twirled around a central pillar, and still somehow up despite the fact it was the end of February. Even allowing for the fact I’d been off the professional gluttony beat for a few weeks (having been disappearing, now and again, to a WiFi-less hut in order to finish writing a book/go very slightly mad), it’s fair to say that this didn’t register as an especially promising sign.
But then, if you linger in this place — a tiny Tamil Malaysian spot on Caledonian Road, open for a little while now and steadily amassing a good deal of hype — then you come to realise that those decorations act as a kind of visual humble brag; a clue that you are in the presence of a restaurant that knows it is on to a winner and duly reserves all its focus and attention for the food.
