Dilara’s Cafe

This is another example of Hackney’s most oft-​repeated culinary trick — the greasy spoon café. Dilara’s ticks all the builder’s breakfast boxes. It serves giant plates of all that is wrong with our national non-​cuisine: fried battery hen eggs, microwave lasagne, soggy white toast, fried sausage and burgers, fried chips, chopped liver, fried onions. All of is it set awash in an ocean of orange beans. The neon plastic bucket seats are bolted to the floor. There are constant road works outside. It’s amazingly cheap. Very grim indeed, and all the more so because of the bleach-​heavy hygiene levels. Not a greasy spoon, fork or knife in sight.