Smoking Goat Shoreditch
Three working London chefs name this room unprompted in three different publications, and all of them are pointing at the same plate of chilli fish sauce wings.
Why go
Ben Chapman's original Smoking Goat worked on Denmark Street, so in late 2017 he opened a much bigger one in the Tea Building on Shoreditch High Street, in a space that had been a strip club (Hot Dinners). The method is the same one that runs through Kiln, his Soho restaurant: smoking and barbecuing technique applied to Thai cooking, in a room modelled on Bangkok's late-night drinking and dining dens. The menu opens with a section called Drinking Foods and the advice from the reviewer who opened the place up is to order all of that before you think about mains. Nuno Mendes eats here on his own at lunch, and James Lowe sends people here for a quick meal. Ella Williams comes for the frozen pina colada.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the chilli fish sauce wings, which Gavin Hanly said "could very well be the best wings in town" and which Jake Missing, who liked much less of the menu, still calls a surefire crowd pleaser. Duck laab for the heat. Lardo rice, which gets better as it cools. Barbecue Tamworth skewers.
- Avoid: the drunken noodles and the massaman curry. Missing's verdict is that they are
indistinct in flavour and spice
2. Also avoid coming as a two and ordering mains, because the room and the plates are built for four sharing.
What locals & experts say
- Nuno Mendes, chef, Lisboeta, in Conde Nast Traveller's Where Chefs Eat (5 August 2022):
Sister to one of the best Thai places in London, Kiln, this is my local and probably one of the restaurants I visit more frequently both for lunch on my own or for a fun night with friends. Killer, tasty Thai food cooked with knowledge and soul. I like sitting at the counter.
3 - James Lowe, chef, in Broadsheet's Where Chefs Eat (27 May 2025), naming the branch himself:
Really good quick eats are Smoking Goat in Shoreditch, or Topa in East London.
6 - Ella Williams, sous chef at Crispin, for TOPJAW (11 December 2024), asked for a cocktail spot:
it's not even a cocktail spot necessarily, but Smoking Goat, the frozen pina colada thing they have, so good, and you can have it with a chocolate of chicken wings.
7 - Jake Missing, The Infatuation London (14 January 2022), 7.5 out of 10, dissenting:
Both the drunken noodles and massaman curry, for example, are indistinct in flavour and spice, such that you'll probably wonder what region of Greater London they're from rather than Thailand.
He is warm on the wings, the duck laab and the lardo rice, and on the room for big groups.2
Good to know
- Where: 64 Shoreditch High Street E1 6JJ, in the Tea Building, straight across from Shoreditch High Street overground.
- Which one: the FSA register lists one Smoking Goat in London, and this is it. The Denmark Street original was superseded by this site in 2017.
- Timing: kitchen noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday, noon to 10pm Sunday.
- Booking: worth doing, and come as four if you can. The sharing plates crowd a small table fast.
- The smoke: it gets into your clothes and stays there.
- Hygiene: the FSA records rating 5, inspected 25 January 2025, with components 5, 5 and 5, where lower is better.5
- Michelin: not recorded either way. Our cached Michelin data is stars only. The Bib Gourmand mentioned in coverage of this group belongs to Kiln, the sister restaurant, and not to this address.
Verdict
should-visit — Three working chefs name this room. Nuno Mendes calls it his local and eats there alone at lunch, James Lowe sends people there for quick eats and says Shoreditch by name, and Ella Williams goes for the frozen pina colada with a plate of wings. That is the strongest evidence class there is short of Jeff eating somewhere himself. Ben Chapman built it in the Tea Building in late 2017 after the original on Denmark Street worked, and it does the same thing Kiln does: smoke and barbecue run through Thai cooking, in a room set up like the late-night drinking dens of Bangkok. The chilli fish sauce wings are the order everyone agrees on. Where it stops short is the rest of the menu. Jake Missing scored it 7.5 for The Infatuation and said the drunken noodles and massaman are indistinct, which squares with the trade view that this is a room you come to with three friends and order the drinking food from, rather than a kitchen that holds up dish for dish. Come as four, order the snacks first, and expect to smell of smoke afterwards.