Lawrence Barrow, who won the Northern Ireland heat of Great British Menu this year, has taken over the kitchen at Rocola on Mare Street until 3 October. Smoked eel boxty, venison heart bottarga and a peat-smoked chocolate and stout cake, in a room with ten seats at the counter.
The residency started on 15 September and runs three weeks. Rocola is the Crudo Group’s Hackney restaurant, and the rotating kitchen is not a gimmick bolted on afterwards, it is the entire premise: the name is Spanish for jukebox, the record changes and the room stays itself. Nico Reynolds opened the programme in July. Barrow is the second act.
Who he is
Barrow was born and raised in Ballymena. He cooked in Australia, New Zealand and Italy before coming back to London to work with Lee Westcott and Jason Atherton, and earlier this year he won the Northern Ireland regional heat of Great British Menu 2026, going on to cook in finals week. This is his food rather than a greatest-hits tour of his CV, which is what makes a three-week residency worth booking over a tasting menu somewhere more famous.
What is on the menu
Four dishes are worth spelling out, because the menu descriptions assume you know more about Northern Irish cooking than most Londoners do.
- Smoked eel boxty with Irish black butter, Coolea and black truffle. Boxty is the traditional grated-potato pancake; Coolea is a gouda-style cheese made in County Cork
- Wild venison tartare with seaweed hashbrown and venison heart bottarga, which means the heart is cured and dried the way a mullet roe would be
- Wild seabass with Atlantic mussels, ratatouille and a bouillabaisse made with Kilkeel crab, landed at the County Down fishing port
- Peat-smoked chocolate and stout cake, which is doing roughly what a whisky does and is the dish we would order first
The room, and the drinks
Rocola is small: ten seats at the bar counter and around fifteen at tables, built round an open kitchen under exposed concrete and ducting. The drinks come out of the same team’s work at Tiny Wine and Crudo Cocina Latina, which means 60 to 80 bottles on the list and cocktails that run from a proper pisco sour to house signatures.
Our take: sit at the counter. In a room this size the counter is not the consolation prize, it is the seat with the view of a Great British Menu finalist working two feet away, and it is the reason to come here rather than to a bigger dining room doing the same food behind a wall. Book it: fifteen tables and three weeks is not much supply, and Saturdays will go first. Worth knowing that Rocola now opens from 5pm Tuesday to Friday and from noon on Saturday, so the Saturday lunch slot is the quiet one. And go before 3 October, because after that the jukebox changes again.
Need to know
- What: Lawrence Barrow’s Northern Irish residency at Rocola, three weeks only
- Where: Rocola, 143 Mare Street, Studio 3, London E8 3RH
- When: 15 September to 3 October 2026
- Hours: Tuesday to Friday 5pm to 10.30pm, Saturday noon to 10.30pm
- Booking: rocola.studio, and yes you need one
- Nearest station: London Fields, or Cambridge Heath
More of the neighbourhood in our Hackney guide, and more places worth a late table in our guide to late night restaurants in London.
