Lucky Strike, East Street: 'A year or two ahead of its time'
Why is everyone so suddenly enthralled by the idea of peasant-core and eating in a sanitised version of a greasy spoon?
The worst £50,000 I ever spent was on a filmmaking degree. I left university with ‘first class’ beautifully scrawled on a piece of paper but very little else.
Despite this, one piece of advice has stuck with me from my three year investment, courtesy of a documentary tutor: “find the small story that tells the bigger picture”.
I reckon I could have saved myself a lot of money and time and just found that on Google. But never mind, I did have some good nights out.
Lucky Strike, on East Street, tells of a very interesting picture indeed. A picture that to truly piece together, we must be introspective, and start by asking ourselves the question ‘why is everyone so suddenly enthralled by the idea of peasant-core and eating in a sanitised version of a greasy spoon?’
I have no doubt that if Lucky Strike was in Clifton or Stokes Croft that it would have been packed with a Crafty-Egg queue out the door on a recent Saturday lunchtime. In those areas, the locals would have sniffed the London-ness of it a mile away and it would have quickly become their new favourite spot.
But on East Street, it seems nobody quite knows what to do with it.
My theory is that middle-class white people are so repulsed by the gentrification that we have created that we feel an overwhelming urge to swing the other way entirely and convince everyone, including ourselves, that we are besotted by the idea of the great British caff. Not cafe - caff. It’s not fancy, it’s not expensive, it’s not new and therefore it is cool. It is the anthesis of small plates, tasting menus, haute cuisine and extortionate bills. And perhaps, having had our literal and metaphorical fill of that, it is what we so crave?
It’s a bit like Uggs coming back into fashion. We all know it’s weird, but because it feels like a rejection of popular culture and everyone else is doing it, we fork out for a pair anyway. Eventually, counter-culture become culture and we’ve gone full circle.
In East London, there is an appetite for this. A viral Instagram account dedicated to the subject has elevated the idea of lunch in a caff to the epitome of chic. But here in Bristol, I fear Lucky Strike may have fallen through the cracks.
Despite very accessible pricing (for which I commend them, especially in the current economic climate) and warm service, they do not seem to have become a draw for the traditional East Street crowd. Perhaps it’s too close in proximity to the authentic originals that it’s imitating, which East Street still has an abundance of despite its current state of flux. Hints of caff cosplay can be observed in the lack of a full English on the menu, which is on carefully sewn, fabric bound backing rather than flaking off the wall.
They do not seem to have drawn food fanatics in either, which I can only put down to the menu being, well, a little boring. Perhaps the appeal is in taking a classic British dish that has traditionally been uninspiring and bringing it up to par. But I go out to eat for adventure, and I do not particularly wish to be transported back to my granny’s kitchen table when going out for food in 2024. The dinner menu holds more appeal than the brunch menu, but I don’t think either is enough to win out over the many other restaurants and dishes I have yet to try around the city.
All that said, the cooking at Lucky Strike is good and I have buckets of respect for anyone prepared to try and do something different.
Starters are too passé to be labelled as such these days. The small, first offerings at Lucky Strike of pickles (£4), Dorset venison pepperoni (£5.5) and a confit garlic and tahini dip with triangles of flatbread (£7) were all very well executed and worthy of being fought over by the three of us around the table.
The first of the larger plates, rarebit (£7), was a bountiful wedge of exquisite cheesy-mustard béchamel on sourdough.
Then it was eggs. Ham and duck fat potatoes with eggs (£8.5), Anglesey eggs (£8), a square sausage bun with egg (£8). It is trying to be a caff, after all.
Ham, egg and chip (duck fat thousand-layer potatoes) couldn’t be technically faulted; runny egg, a satisfying crunch to the stack of potatoes as you cut through them, generous slices of ham. So why did I care for it so little? I’ve no doubt there are people who would delight in such a dish. I wish they’d either stuck with the classic format and done it really well, or gone the whole hog and been more creative.
Many people know Anglesey, far fewer will know that they have their own eggs. You wouldn’t necessarily even know this dish contained an egg, as the soft boiled centrepiece was buried under a thick layer of cheese and entombed by potato and leeks. I’ve never had Anglesey eggs before, and though again it was technically without flaw, I don’t think I would bother again.
The square sausage was served on a round bun, with round slices of black pudding and a triangular tattie scone. Once dipped in HP sauce it became positively enjoyable, but the only significant difference between that and a sausage mcmuffin was less feelings of guilt.
To be completely transparent, I am not a huge fan of brunch as a concept. I’d take a daal, a bowl of noodles or a lasagne over eggs any day, even if it’s 7am.
Black Forest Delight (£6.5) looked straight out of a 1970s recipe book. Evidently back then texture was unheard of, as this tower of chocolate and creme de cassis could really have done with some salted dark chocolate brittle.
I think there is a reason that melon hasn’t made its way into Eton mess en masse, though it has made it into the iteration at Lucky Strike. Too-toothy, too-large chunks of cantaloupe certainly stood out among the pile of meringue and cream but sadly for all the wrong reasons. Trying something different is applaudable; but in this case it just doesn’t work.
And so there ended my quest, back to the 1970s to a restaurant cosplaying as a caff and wishing it were in London. With every trend comes a counter-trend, but I don’t think Bristol has reached far enough to swing the other way yet, and Lucky Strike is therefore a year or two ahead of its time.
East Street, Bedminster, is the small story that tells of a big picture; that average food is average food no matter how cool the restaurant.
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Lucky Strike, 61 East Street, Bedminster, BS3 4HB