Marrion’s, made to conquer hearts in Hackney

Marrion’s

“That’s the Norman’s effect for you,” read a message from a friend, pinged on the niche subject of culinary gentrification.

I nodded along unknowingly while googling what else I might have missed in the 15 years since leaving school, or, more damningly, five since fleeing east London. “The Norman effect: the linguistic and social aftermath of the Norman Conquest of 1066; French influence reshaping English vocabulary, class and rule.”

Marrion’s

.

“Relaxed neighbourhood restaurant” and “unfussy” are the two pre-opening pillars, both starkly accurate on arrival, just by default of not having something to fuss about.

I sit at the bar in front of two enthusiastic barmen with a small hole in the wall behind them leading to the kitchen of what is billed as a cocktail-led fusion restaurant.

On paper, you’d worry about Marrion’s succeeding as a neighbourhood local because fusion has never been anyone’s go-to. It is a one-night gimmick, something you try once and leave with a renewed appreciation for the original.

No rational member of society has gobbled a sushi burrito and thought both cultures had finally reached their natural conclusion. Fusion is not innovation, but botched taxidermy: two fine cuisines sawn through the middle then stitched back together for the sake of novelty, a long fan of glossy hula leaves grafted beneath the stiff, musky torso of lederhosen. Nein danke.

Marrion’s chooses French bistro and American diner, which at least feels a little more plausible. The two nations have collaborated before. There was Vietnam. Then Disneyland Paris. Then the cronut. A mixed bag.

Marrion’s

.

Coppa ham arrives under a scatter of pickled green chillies. These are delectable slices of deep red meat, webbed with shining marbled fat. Most of the congratulations are due to the pig. Moules-frites and crab toast follow swiftly.

The cheese arrives with its aggressive trademark blisters, clamped over dark crab meat with a Worcestershire kick running through it. Dark crab is a flavour that holds court at dinner parties.

Here, it is unexpectedly humbled by a mature cheese that matches it in loud stature. Oddly, the two settle one another in a rich, salty vulgarity. It is the sort of dinner party you enjoy enormously provided you’re not expected to see it all through.

The moules-frites are as they should be, which is faint praise until you consider how many restaurants have spent decades finding new ways to interfere with moules-frites. Through the window, I can see Kaye cooking solo. There is no ticket rail. Instead, five salt shakers sit on top of the paper orders to stop them wandering off. It makes the kitchen look less brigade de cuisine and more seaside village church raffle.

Marrion’s makes more sense as I go on: tuna melt, schnitzel Holstein and a cheeseburger, with most plates sitting somewhere around the £12 mark. The tuna melt is perhaps the dish that best explains what Marrion’s is trying to do, Monterey jack cheese peeping through the top lip and a large half log of pickle pinned with a toothpick.

“The burger is how an elderly Parisian would tart up a Big Mac”

Kaye doesn’t attempt to rescue anything; he tightens the bolts on things that already exist. Like the cheeseburger.

There are foods improved by supreme culinary intervention and foods that mainly require somebody to know when to stop. This burger falls firmly into the latter camp and can best be described as how you’d expect an elderly Parisian to tart up a Big Mac. It retains the indecent nostalgia. Restraint matters because Marrion’s could so easily have become a restaurant about its own concept. I can smell the nauseating truffle mayo already.

Instead, Marrion’s is casual enough not to feel performed, but serious enough to return to. The prices permit repetition and the room encourages an uncluttered neutrality, and it grew on me. I may have missed “the Norman’s effect”. Any neighbourhood would be well served with a Marrion’s one.