Sune.

Sune

Honey Spencer and Charlie Sims are married, and they work the same job at the same time in the same thirty-six-seat room, one coming down each aisle to your table, which Nicholas Lander says he has not seen anywhere else in the trade (JancisRobinson.com).

Why go

Because two critics who share almost nothing arrived at the same place. James Manning gave it five stars for Time Out in January 2024 and wrote that the food was "a notch above what you'll get at Café Cecilia across the canal", which at that moment was sitting at the top of Time Out's own list of London's best restaurants. That is a big thing to put in print about a room three months old.

Lander came in February 2025, a year on, and checked the operation instead. He paid £370 for three people and said he did it "with a great deal of satisfaction", and he also wrote that the menu is "not that novel or groundbreaking". Both of those are useful. A place can be unoriginal and still be the best cooking on the canal.

The kitchen is tiny and it has a big charcoal grill in it, and it sits by the front door so you say hello to the cooks on the way past (Time Out, JancisRobinson.com). Michael Robins runs it after two years as head chef at Pidgin, with Acme Fire Cult and Akoko behind that. Spencer bought the wine: a hundred bins of low-intervention, corroborated by two separate William Reed pages, from a sommelier who was wine director at The Palomar and at Evelyn's Table and then wrote Natural Wine, No Drama (Restaurant).

Order this / avoid

• Order: the beef tartare on a croque monsieur. It came from what off-duty cooks eat late at l'Express in Montreal, and getting raw beef and melted cheese to the right temperature at once is the whole trick. Then the raw sea bass in beetroot and dill, the smoked eel caesar, and the charred flatbread with horseradish cream and trout roe. Let Spencer pick the bottle.
• Avoid: the grilled potatoes in brown butter, creme fraiche, egg yolk and a great deal of black pepper. It is the other house signature and it is the one plate Manning said he would not order again. Also avoid Monday, when they are shut.

What locals & experts say

• James Manning, Time Out London, five stars out of five: The level of depth, detail, thought and skill in some of these dishes is honestly staggering, and they're picture-pretty. On the flatbread: it tasted like taramasalata with serious attitude. His one dissent, on the potatoes: The only thing I wouldn't order again a hundred times over was another Sune signature.1
• Nicholas Lander, JancisRobinson.com, a year later: The menu is not that novel or groundbreaking but all that we ate was extremely well executed. He also disliked a bottle and said so: a skin-fermented Austrian Schödl that we didn't particularly enjoy. Perhaps our minds were not free enough.2
• Adejoké Bakare, chef-patron of Chishuru, in the MICHELIN Guide's "My London" series, March 2026, answering where she takes a date: in Hackney, it's a very special neighbourhood restaurant by Broadway Market. It's small, it's dimly lit and you'll order too much wine.6
• Charlie Sims, on what he was aiming at, to Joe Lutrario before opening: The most fundamental quality of a neighbourhood restaurant is that it's somewhere you want to always go back to and feel like it's yours. That is the owner talking about his own room, so it is a statement of intent.3

Good to know

• Where: 129A Pritchard's Road E2 9AP, where the Regent's Canal meets the foot of Broadway Market. Time Out files it under Haggerston, the awards profile calls it Hackney, and the FSA files the postcode under Tower Hamlets. Same door.
• Size: 36 covers. Book.
• Hours: lunch Wednesday to Saturday, dinner Tuesday to Saturday, Sunday brunch, closed Monday. The kitchen stops at 21:45 and the bar runs to 23:30.
• Sites: one. There is no second Sune.
• The seat: the window counter, if there are two of you.
• Hygiene: the FSA register carries no record for 129A Pritchard's Road, which is missing data rather than a finding.
• Diet: the venue publishes no dietary statement, so nothing is flagged. Absence of a flag means unknown.

Verdict

must-visit — Plan an evening around it. Time Out gave it five stars and then went further than a star rating usually allows, writing that the food was a notch above Café Cecilia across the canal while Café Cecilia sat at the top of their own list of the best restaurants in London. Nicholas Lander, who ran L'Escargot and has filed for the FT since 1989, ate here a year later and found every plate 'extremely well executed' while saying straight out that the menu is not groundbreaking, which is the useful kind of dissent. Adejoké Bakare, who holds a star at Chishuru, sends dates here. The kitchen is a small one with a big charcoal grill, sitting by the front door so you meet the cooks, and Michael Robins came off two years running Pidgin. The wine is a hundred bins of low-intervention bought by Honey Spencer, who wrote a book about it and is one half of a married pair working the same floor job at once. Thirty-six covers, canal side, three people ate and drank for £370. Craft carries this: the plate and the glass are both the work of people who chose to be small and buy properly, and the room is the third thing rather than the first.