The Macbeth, N1
Is this a bifana which I see before me?
The Plimsoll is undoubtedly my favourite pub to eat at in London, so when one of the two chefs originally behind it branched out with a new beer-based opening, I was always going to pay attention. By the time I heard they served a bifana, I knew I couldn’t stay away.
The Macbeth — a storied old Hackney boozer that I mostly remember for fairly grimy ‘90s nights a decade or so ago — is a new project from Jamie Allan, formerly half of the Four Legs duo (alongside Ed McIlroy) behind The Plimsoll and Tollington’s. Allan has resisted the temptation to use going solo as an excuse to reinvent himself; if you’d sat me down in the dining room and handed me the menu without further context, I suspect I’d have had good odds of guessing some number of legs were involved.
Like The Plimsoll, the pub has been infused with a sort of shabby chic, any hint of the modern excised in favour of charity shop plates and battered wooden furniture. It’s an aesthetic that must be harder than it looks, judging by how many modern pubs get it dreadfully wrong, but Allan clearly has a knack for it — helped along here by a wall-spanning tiled mural drawn from the titular play, which can’t help but add a certain something.
The menu might also seem achingly familiar to Plimsoll regulars: a couple little nibbles, some simple charcuterie, seafood-heavy small plates, something involving bivalves, something involving cheesy meat in a bun, and two larger mains to round things off before a pair of desserts. Reinvention, this is not.
What’s new at The Macbeth is the Portuguese framing. Four Legs has always taken the Mediterranean for its inspiration, from a broadly southern European approach at The Plimsoll to a tighter focus on Catalan seafood at Tollington’s. That means it’s no surprise to see Portugal get a turn, though it is welcome, since it gets short shrift at plenty of other London restaurants. Allan is no traditionalist though, so while you’ll find everything from piri piri to vinho verde across the menu, it won’t all arrive exactly as it might in the Algarve, and the menu is bolstered by unexpected touches from further afield.
Croquettes pair cured ham with smoked trout, amping up the savoury flavours even further courtesy of subtly salty anchovy mayo. A motley assortment of duck offal has the gaminess cooked out of it, and what’s left is purposefully overpowered by a punchy, warming onion sambal and a shower of coriander; it’s offal for everyone who insists they don’t like the stuff. Slices of cucumber and crisp shards of fried bread are provided to mop the meat up with and cut the flavour further. Mild monkfish liver appears elsewhere on the menu, spread thick across toast with a topping of crushed tomatoes, bright enough to become the star and allow the liver to lurk in the background, providing an unctuous funk to the whole affair.
If I had to quibble, I’d say that toast could have done with a little more salt, and seasoning was a problem elsewhere, though mostly in the other direction. A soupy, viscous seafood rice with echoes of jambalaya could have been the star dish were it not just that bit over-salted. It fared better than the rabbit piri piri, which was grilled better than any rabbit I’ve eaten, piled amongst crisp golden chips and dressed with a sharp, acidic chilli sauce, but undone by utterly excessive salt. I wish I could tell you this knocked Nando’s for six, but I was too busy gulping water to truly enjoy it. Up-and-down seasoning isn’t an uncommon problem two weeks into an opening, and hopefully Allan et al. can fine-tune soon enough.
There are other dishes that show promise but miss the mark in different ways. A John Dory escabeche is vibrantly colourful but curiously one-note, sour but not much else, and left an unappealing orange pool of oil behind in its wake. A mustard-heavy bifana arrives in the midst of a citywide trend, though is both cheesier than I’m used to and cooked harder, arriving blackened and a little dry. It still tastes pretty great — it’s a stewed pork and cheese sandwich, there’s only so wrong it can go — but it’s obvious there’s room for it to be better.
I could say no such thing about the flan, an absolute stunner of a dessert that deserves to earn a permanent spot on this menu as The Macbeth’s talismanic equivalent to the Dexter cheeseburger. Unlike some of the earlier dishes, there’s not much invention to speak of here, but rather a classic dish executed excellently. It arrives the colour of sunlight with a dark amber top, pooling in a malty caramel sauce. It’s wibbly, it’s wobbly, it’s unexpectedly eggy (but all the better for it), and it would justify a trip to The Macbeth all by itself.
If this flan, not to mention Allan’s past pedigree, is a sign of this pub’s potential then there’s a lot to look forward to indeed. Things haven’t entirely clicked just yet, but the foundations are in place, there’s ample talent in the kitchen, and a lofty bar set to prove what heights are possible. The Macbeth isn’t up there with The Plimsoll so far, but it’s given me faith that before long it will be.
Updated, September 3rd: Jamie Allan is formerly of Four Legs, but no longer involved.