When I wrote my guide to tacos a few weeks back, I mentioned that there were only two places in London I’d recommend anyone buy a burrito, and one of them was shut.
Well, not any more — Bad Manners is back.
After a few weeks away, the breakfast-centric Mexican spot has decamped from a churchyard in Hackney to, well, a churchyard in Shoreditch. Which I suppose is technically also a churchyard in Hackney, but I promise it is a different place. It joins Good Manners, their Canonbury coffee offshoot, which is still up and running.
Some things have changed. While in Hackney they operated out of a fairly substantial kiosk, with space nearby for tables and chairs, the Shoreditch setup is a little leaner. The kitchen is run out of a gleaming chrome food truck, with only a few bar tables nearby to loiter at — though the rest of the churchyard has some (fairly ramshackle) benches aplenty.
What hasn’t changed is the breakfast burrito, a mainstay of Bad Manners since before it was ever Bad Manners, when Max Fishman and chef Rodrigo Cervantes first set up shop together as Quarter Kitchen. Its current iteration is simple enough: house-made pork sausage, soft omelette, a few tater tots for crunch, all topped with cheese, pickles, and salsa roja.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll realise you’re about to eat something special before the first bite. Thick, fresh flour tortillas are seared before serving — as opposed to getting gently introduced to a lukewarm sandwich press for all of five seconds, which seems to be the norm elsewhere around the city — adding a crisp and crunch that’s needed to contrast the great, joyous mush that makes up any decent burrito’s interior.
The chunks of sausage here are substantial, rich, intensely porky, contrasted by the velvety smooth folds of egg, and the sticky pull of American cheese. This is not a healthsome take on the breakfast burrito — no fresh tomatoes or the bright green pop of avocado to make you feel good about yourself — but it’s salty, satisfying, restorative, the sort of breakfast that makes you wish you had just a little bit of a hangover in order to truly enjoy it.
In keeping with the breakfast theme, coffee — in all stripes — is the only beverage on offer, with beans from Woolwich’s Plot Roasting. That bucks London’s burgeoning obsession with Jarritos, but the beans and baristas here make the coffee worthwhile.
It’s also another hangover from Bad Manners’ good old days, but not much else has stayed the same. In fairness, between its two names and three years of operation, Bad Manners seemed to change its menu on the regular. Sometimes it offered the breakfast burrito and a taco or two, while other times what felt like a full Mexican kitchen ran out of the compact kiosk. Tamales, deep fried quesadillas, and stuffed chicken wings have all come out at one time or another, and you never knew quite what you were going to get until you turned up of a morning.
The new iteration is somewhat simpler. That sausage burrito is joined by two other breakfast options — egg and bean, or tofu and bean — which are served all day, while from 12pm on they’re joined by barbacoa and aubergine options. That means veggie and vegan options aplenty, though if you’re feeling carnivorous the barbacoa is also a winner: intensely savoury braised beef soaks through the accompanying rice and beans, for an even less subtle take than the breakfast number. If anything the barbacoa might be a touch too much, and I’d love some sharper citrus and salsa notes to really punch through it.
I’d be remiss not to mention the sides. Refried beans are given unexpected interest with a topping of nutty salsa macha, but the totchos are the so-stupid-it’s-genius star: tater tots, but make them nachos. Tots are topped with beans, pickles, cheese, pico de gallo, and lime crema. So far, so good, but the giveaway that someone’s put real work into this act of insanity is that the toppings aren’t so wet as to get the potato damp (no-one wants soggy tots…), leaving these almost impossibly crisp until the last bite, and well worth the personal embarrassment of having to ask for “totchos” out loud.
I’ll miss the interesting, experimental side of Bad Manners’ menus gone by, but this straightforward setup of burritos and sides probably makes much more sense as a business model. And besides — when you’re making just about the only good burrito in town, the smart move is to lean in.
Why do you think it moved? The setup seems worse.