Lagom at Hackney Church Brew Co

Arch, Flame, and the Art of Just Enough

The railway arches of east London have become a reliable address for a certain kind of drinking and dining: industrial bones, deliberate informality, and a clientele that arrives without much ceremony. Lagom at Hackney Church Brew Co, on Bohemia Place near Hackney Central, sits inside that tradition while pushing it somewhere more considered. Nave-like beams curve overhead, seating runs along long refectory benches, and the service counter at the far end of the room carries the faint architectural authority of a chancel screen. The brewery itself occupies the adjacent arch, visible through the structure, turning out IPAs, lagers, and pilsners that anchor the drinks offering. The name Lagom — a Swedish term broadly meaning 'just the right amount' — functions as both philosophy and self-assessment.

The Drinks Program: Beer First, But Not Only

The editorial angle assigned to wine-list depth and curation philosophy applies here with a necessary twist: this is a brewery-led operation, and the cellar logic follows accordingly. East London has developed a recognisable tier of brewery taprooms that treat the drinks as the primary text and food as a supporting note. Lagom inverts that slightly, running a kitchen serious enough that the beer program must compete on equal terms rather than simply setting the scene.

House brewery produces a range that covers the approachable end of craft: IPAs with enough bitterness to cut through fire-cooked meat, pilsners clean enough to work alongside lighter vegetable preparations, lagers suited to the session end of a Sunday afternoon. For drinkers who follow the format of pairing beer to open-flame cooking, this is a coherent offering. The 'other drinks available' notation in the venue record leaves room for a supporting spirits and soft drinks list, though the brewery output is clearly the intended conversation partner for the food.

What Lagom does not do , and this is worth noting for visitors accustomed to the wine-led gastropub model that has dominated much of inner east London , is build its identity around a deep wine list. The commitment here is to the house product, and that distinction places it in a different peer set from the wine-bar-adjacent dining rooms that have proliferated across Dalston and London Fields in recent years. Venues elsewhere in the city that operate with clarified wine programs and sommelier-led curation , places like 69 Colebrooke Row or A Bar with Shapes For a Name , occupy a different register entirely. Lagom's drinks philosophy is less about depth and more about fit: the right beer with the right dish, at the right price, in the right room.

Open Flame as the Kitchen's Organising Principle

The cooking at Lagom runs through fire as its single most consistent variable. Open-flame cooking has moved from a point of difference to a broadly shared technique across London's mid-market dining rooms, but the execution varies considerably. At Lagom, the format accommodates whole chickens, pork T-bones served with apple mustard, and lamb loin chops in green sauce alongside seasonal vegetable preparations that use the grill with equal seriousness: grilled asparagus in lemon emulsion with charcoal oil in late spring, beetroot carpaccio in molasses, leeks in romesco with smoked hazelnuts through the winter months. The seasonal shift is genuine rather than decorative, with the menu's ingredients tracking the agricultural calendar rather than holding a fixed roster.

Chef-patron Elliot Cunningham has attracted particular attention for the smash burger, which has become the dish most associated with Lagom's reputation in east London. The format is familiar , beef, mustard mayo, vinegar slaw, American cheese , but the execution is described in the venue record as one in which the components achieve genuine integration rather than simple assembly. That kind of precision in a low-cost format is harder to sustain consistently than it appears, which explains why it registers as a point of distinction rather than a baseline.

The Sunday Ritual and the Hangover Bowl

Sunday roasts in east London occupy a competitive space. The neighbourhood's large stock of converted spaces and brewery venues means that the format is widely available, and differentiation increasingly comes from specificity of offer rather than breadth. Lagom's Sunday proposition includes a conventional roast alongside the 'hangover bowl': offcuts of fire-cooked beef, chicken, and pork piled over roast potatoes and vegetables, finished with a Yorkshire pudding and brisket gravy, priced at £12. The price point sits well below what comparable bowl-format dishes command at gastropubs in adjacent postcodes, and the format , informal, generous, explicitly anti-fussy , matches the room's character without any apparent contradiction.

The crispy potatoes with garlic mayo appear as a recommended addition regardless of the main order, which is the kind of specific, repeatable intelligence that reflects consistent kitchen output rather than an occasional highlight.

Where It Sits in the East London Picture

London's east end has accumulated enough brewery-pub operations over the past decade to allow meaningful comparisons. The better ones share a set of characteristics: a coherent drinks identity tied to the production operation on site, a kitchen that treats food as a primary offering rather than an afterthought, and a room designed to sustain long, communal visits rather than high table turnover. Lagom meets all three criteria with some confidence.

Across the wider UK bar and pub scene, the community-first brewery format appears in different regional registers. Schofield's in Manchester, Bramble in Edinburgh, and the Horseshoe Bar Glasgow each represent how local drinking culture shapes a room's social function. Lagom's version is specifically east London: a congregation of regulars, a democratic seating format, and a menu priced to allow repeat visits rather than occasional celebrations. For London-wide context across bars and dining rooms, our full London restaurants guide maps the broader picture.

Other bars operating in London's more structured cocktail and spirits tier , including Academy, Amaro, and the technically rigorous A Bar with Shapes For a Name , represent a different category of London drinking, oriented toward craft and connoisseurship over communal ease. Internationally, venues like Merchant Hotel in Belfast, Mojo Leeds, L'Atelier Du Vin in Brighton, and Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu each demonstrate how local drink culture inflects the room. Lagom's inflection is Hackney: communal, fire-lit, priced for the neighbourhood.

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