Jimi Famurewa reviews the Tramshed Project: Innovation, inclusiveness and incisive brilliance

I think that, for some people, the typical daytime scene at The Tramshed Project in Shoreditch will represent something of a hurdle.

In fact, let’s not mince words. For restaurant purists, this enormous, multi-node co-working and dining space with its tablefuls of young east Londoners squinting into the glow of their MacBooks will mark the freshest of hells: a hospitality space where freelancers on laptops, rather than being grimly tolerated vibe-killers, are the actively welcomed core demographic.

And, well, I can see their point. But all I can say is that, after months at a back-knackering home desk, pining for the regular Before Times comfort of a few hours working in a nice café, walking into the thrumming, light-drenched hangar here on a recent afternoon felt like encountering something pulled directly from my brain. For my money, what founder Dominic Cools-Lartigue and his team have done with their membership-free Shoreditch House-style model, ambitious menu, provocative art and capture of a social distancing-friendly space — lamentably freed up by the Covid closure of Mark Hix’s Tramshed — is use disaster as a springboard for frantic creativity.

Or at least that was what they had done before London’s move to Tier 2 strictures, which were announced the day before I visited and brought in the day after, complicated things. It could be a living parable of the impossible, ever-mutating task currently faced by restaurateurs. And the added wrinkle in the case of The Tramshed Project, as I can confirm after a palate-jangling stormer of a lunch there, is that if it’s not long for this world then it will be a real tragedy.

Two of the three new collaborator chefs (James Cochran and Zoe Adjonyoh) didn’t yet have their dishes available. But Andrew Clarke, latterly of nearby St Leonards, headlines the all-day offering and his signatures — smoke-wreathed live fire cooking, butchly prepared vegetables, umami-forward sauces that land with all the subtlety of a flying elbow drop — are very much in evidence.

Up in the mezzanine after triangular cut pieces of peppery fennel salami it was straight on to grilled leeks; smartly layered with the symphonic, salty-sweet build of vivid herb oil, toasted almonds and a thick pelt of shaved truffle. Main dishes — succulent, griddle-striped chicken with plump chanterelles and a shimmering ocean of pungent miso cream, and Swaledale smoked lamb shoulder flatbread that channelled all the trainer-splatting, messy interplay of a great kebab — had the same sense of hearty traditionalism shot through with little intensifying flashes of modernity. Even the fries were better than they had any right to be: chilli salt-dusted shoestring affairs with a lacy crispness that brought to mind both the mythic ones at The Spotted Pig in New York and, weirdly, the bags of Chipsticks I’d inhale after swimming at Woolwich Waterfront leisure centre circa 1995.

It’s a mark of the attention to detail here. And another reason why, after we polished off a ravishingly crumbly almond and plum tart, I wandered out grieving anew that a thoughtfully conceived, high-calibre restaurant like this should have the misfortune of emerging at such a challenging time. The plan is eventually to put some outdoor tables in a blustery adjacent ginnel and, broadly, attempt to tough it out. The business lunch loophole could help, too. ‘We’ve just got to keep fighting,’ said Cools-Lartigue at the end, handing me my bike and looking pretty stricken behind his face mask. They are words all of us could live by at the moment. And somewhere like The Tramshed Project, through its innovation, inclusiveness and the incisive brilliance of its cooking, reminds us exactly what we’re fighting for.

The Tramshed Project

1 Fennel salami £3

1 Grilled leeks £8

1 Half chicken £12

1 Lamb shoulder naan £12

1 Fries £4

1 Plum and almond tart £6

1 Cornish Orchard cider bottle £6

1 Pint of Camden Pale Ale £4

1 Belu still water £3.75

1 Americano £3

Total £77.35

32 Rivington Street, Shoreditch, EC2 (020 3515 0480; tramshedproject.com)

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