There's a decent value-for-money Chinese restaurant in Dalston on Kingsland road called Shanghai. What's really special about the place is that it occupies what was, 140+ years ago, a pie & mash shop. The interior of the front is a beautifully eel-themed tile and wood affair that seems perfectly appropriate repurposed as a Shanghai diner. Our boys' wonderful babysitter, now a pink-haired, bicycle-riding grandmother, is a life-long east-ender and remembers when that shop used to still have live(!) eels.
I love that about cities: things built to last, with a bit of panache, and density and interest enough to keep reusing and reinventing what you already have to work with.
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