Rocola, Mare Street: Hackney's new rotating kitchen opens July 2026

The Crudo Group team’s new Hackney restaurant has a rotating kitchen, a serious wine list and a launch residency that’s reason enough to book now.

There’s a particular kind of restaurant that Mare Street does well: independent, characterful, with something going on beyond just the food. Rocola, opening on 8 July, looks like it belongs here.

The new opening comes from Crudo Group, the team behind Crudo Cocina Latina and Tiny Wine, founded by Maria Yanez and Carlos Socorro. Rocola is their most ambitious project yet: a permanent restaurant and bar built around an open kitchen, a serious drinks list and a rotating programme of guest chefs, residencies, wine tastings and music nights. The name comes from the Spanish word for jukebox, which tells you everything about the intention. The record changes; the room stays itself.

Seared steak on white plate — *Seared steak*

The permanent menu draws on the team’s Latin American roots and Southern European influences, built for sharing and kept deliberately short. Think snacks and aperitivo bites at the bar, antipasti, seasonal small plates, and a handful of larger dishes from the grill and oven. Drinks are equally considered, with 60 to 80 bottles on the wine list and cocktails spanning classics like margaritas and pisco sours alongside house signatures. Tiny Wine has already earned the team a reputation for knowing how to put together a list worth exploring, and that instinct carries over here.

The launch residency is a good signal of intent. Dublin-born chef Nico Reynolds, who built his following through pop-up Lil Portie and a stint on Vice’s Fck That’s Delicious with Action Bronson, opens the programme with a menu that pulls together Caribbean heat, South American brightness and produce-led cooking in a way that’s genuinely hard to categorise. Jerk lamb shepherd’s pie coxinha, monkfish and mussels with nduja butter, prawn causa. It’s the kind of cooking that makes you want to book immediately rather than wait to see how the reviews land.

The room itself has an exposed concrete, warm lighting, industrial feel that keeps the focus on what matters. With just ten bar counter seats and 14 to 16 table covers it’s small, which means it’ll fill up fast once word gets out.

The LxL take: Rocola has the DNA of somewhere that becomes a neighbourhood institution within six months. Book the launch residency with Nico Reynolds while you still can.