London’s best sustainable restaurants: Coin Laundry, Exmouth Market

Offering more variety of dishes than a typical gastro-pub but more relaxed than a restaurant, Coin Laundry is ideal for groups of friends to catch up over tasty bar snacks, sharing plates, home-brewed beers and tasty cocktails.

Menu

The Exmouth Market venue recently relaunched with a new menu focussing on small plates served sharing style. To be completely honest, we could have tried them all, but as there was only two of us we reluctantly restrained ourselves. The lamb croquettes, crispy on the outside and deliciously creamy on the inside, were a standout favourite. The signature smoky chicken with Devon chilli and yoghurt is both sweet and spicy. Can you ever go wrong with creamy burrata served with fig and honey, a drizzle of olive oil and scattered with hazelnuts for good crunch?

Head chef Mack Barnstable grew up in Somerset and trained at Hix so has a love of British produce. He says: “Now the weather is beginning to change we have really started focussing on our Sunday roasts, the signature roast is the Shropshire Ribeye with Tewkesbury mustard.

"My favourite is the lamb leg from Todenham Manor Farm in Gloucestershire which we cook overnight, so the meat is falling off the bone.”

Atmosphere

Loud and friendly. Go for after work dinners, bottomless weekend brunch or Sunday roasts.

Ethics and sustainability credentials

This is a menu that celebrates sustainable British produce. The truly free-range chickens come from Castlemead farm; the beef from rare breed, grazing cattle sourced from Select Butchery or Foodchain; and the lamb is from McIntyre Meats who rear and slaughter their own animals. The crab is pot caught and the mackerel line caught. The milks and creams are from the well-regarded Estate Dairy.

Good for: (Lots of) small plates

Cost: ££

Sustainability rating: 3/5

Address: 70 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QP, coinlaundry.co.uk

Lizzie Rivera is the founder of London’s ethical lifestyle website bicbim.co.uk