The London Piglet

If you’ve got a serious vintage clothes addiction, head to the northern end of Brick Lane and make a beeline for the brilliant This Shop Rocks (129-131 Brick Lane), which dresses the most colourful characters seen at local cabaret and burlesque nights. Keep with the retro vibe and head to Labour and Wait (85 Redchurch Street), a delightful old-fashioned hardware store selling household products harking back to the Forties and Fifties.

Nearby Columbia Road Market is most famous for its colourful and fragrant Sunday flower market which runs from the crack of dawn until 2pm. However, it’s also a treasure trove of interiors shops and art galleries, including Nelly Duff (156 Columbia Road), Elphicks (60 Columbia Road) and Ryantown (126 Columbia Road), Red Online favourite Rob Ryan’s first shop selling his intricate and delicate papercut designs. A lovely find is knitting shop Prick Your Finger (260 Globe Road, Bethnal Green) where you’ll find knitting paraphernalia, from homespun yarns to upholstery yarns and chunky yarns from their own sheep. It also sells humorous knitted novelties such as knitted cigarette kits and crochet moustache kits.

Best hotels in East London

There’s so much to do in the East End with accommodation options to suit all tastes; it’s easy to make a weekend of it. For a quirky stay, there’s the deeply eccentric 40 Winks (109 Mile End Road; tel: 020 7790 0259; 40winks.org), a bed and breakfast with two flamboyantly decorated rooms, courtesy of its interior designer owner David Carter. David regularly organises decadently themed storytelling evenings from professional storytellers.

For contemporary cool, try Boundary, which offers an excellent restaurant (part of the Conran stable), stylish rooms and a popular rooftop for sunset drinks with a view, all on the super fashionable Redchurch Street near Brick Lane. 

Even deeper into East London is Bethnal Green’s Town Hall (Patriot Square; tel: 020 7871 0460) which combines cooler-than-cool modern rooms with the architectural splendour of the former town hall. It also has its own Michelin-starred restaurant, Viajante and its sister eatery, The Corner Room.

Things to do in East London

For a cultural night out, see what’s on at the Hackney Picture House (270 Mare Street). It shows mainstream and art house movies, and its Hackney Attic venue on the top floor often has live bands and music, film quizzes, short film screenings, and spoken-word events. Similarly, Rich Mix (35-47 Bethnal Green Road) near Brick Lane is a cinema and arts centre with an eclectic line-up of spoken word events and art exhibitions. For a romantic movie night, head to the Aubin Cinema (64-66 Redchurch Street), where you can order a bottle of wine and watch your movie from a velvet sofa snuggled up under soft blankets.

One of the coolest places for a drink and a dance is Platform (Netil House, 2nd Floor, 1-7 Westgate Street), a cafe/bar/terrace on the second floor of a former Sixties office block, which has been turned into a warren of studio spaces. This industrial-style space is filled with a mish-mash of vintage leather sofas, retro kitchen tables and chairs and, bizarrely, houseplants, for an at-home feel. Every night features different DJs and sounds that always get the crowd up and dancing.

Bistrotheque (23-27 Wadeson Street), is just a stone’s throw from the Vyner Street art galleries and is a smart venue with a wood-panelled bar selling the perfect whiskey sour. It’s got a white-table clothed restaurant offering the best bistro food in the area, and a cabaret room showing some of London’s best burlesque and cabaret acts.

If you happen to be in East London on the first Thursday of the month, join the crowds of local artists and residents at the open evening on Vyner Street where all the art galleries open their doors to the public until 9pm in the evening.

Best bars and cafes in East London

There’s no shortage of good pitstops in East London, the most westerly one being Shoreditch’s Pitfield Lifestyle Shop and Cafe (Pitfield House, 31-35 Pitfield Street). Here you can linger over coffee and cake while perusing upcycled furniture, vintage finds, designer wallpapers and other curiosities.

Another quirky little place serving great coffee, snacks and wood-fired pizza, is Towpath Cafe (36 De Beauvoir Crescent, Hackney), a long, thin waterside eatery along the Hackney stretch of the Regent’s Canal. The Welsh rarebit is particularly recommended and makes a perfect brunch option for a sunny Sunday. Towpath also organises occasional events using barges and floating platforms to house DJ decks, fireworks and other seasonal events.

Too cool for school – but in a great way – is Ombra (1 Vyner Street). It’s a Venetian cafe and eatery on the uber-arty Vyner Street, home to architects and art galleries, and its authentic relaxed Italian vibe, staff and menu help turn every visit into an Aperol Spritz-fuelled fiesta.

Best restaurants in East London

Broadway Market’s cacophonous Saturday food market brings in swathes of food-lovers eating on the hoof, but it also now offers great bars and restaurants that are open all week long. Amongst these is the recently opened Market Cafe (2 Broadway Market), with its Italian worker’s cafe vibe, complete with Formica tables and Fifties wallpaper, a young, arty clientele, and a top-notch eating experience with an affordable price point. Try the ‘Hackney Cup’, a delicious Campari-based cocktail, and the homemade pasta with meat sauce (especially if it happens to be the pork cooked in milk).

For a slightly more formal environment, head to The Empress (130 Lauriston Road) in Victoria Park Village. It’s a relaxed, warehouse-style East London restaurant helmed by Chef Elliott Lidstone. The former chef of Michelin-starred L’Ortolan restaurant in Berkshire has put together a European menu with a fashionable emphasis on British cheap cuts such as ox tongue and pig’s ear. With the Ginger Pig butchers opposite, Jonathan Norris fishmongers up the road and E5 Bakehouse in neighbouring London Fields, The Empress has the finest produce at its fingertips.

It would be a crime to leave East London without trying one of its famous curry houses, but locals in-the-know avoid the tourist traps on Brick Lane and head to one of a ‘trinity’ of much-loved curry houses.Lahore (367 Commercial Road) and Mirch Masala (111-113 Commercial Road) are both brilliant, whileTayyabs (83-89 Fieldgate Street), has expanded across three buildings to cope with its unstoppable rise in popularity (though you’ll need to factor in queuing during peak times).

Interesting East London walks

The Olympic Games will leave some amazing legacies, not least of which is the development of Fish Island and Hackney Wick. A walk around this edgy neighbourhood, bound by the River Lea and the Hertford Union Canal, brings you to the very heart of East London factory land. This maze of warehouses, many featuring stunning street art, has slowly been turned into artists’ studio spaces, cool coffee shops, pizzerias, microbreweries and arts spaces. Stop for a coffee at Counter Cafe (7 Roach Road, Hackney Wick)or a pint of Crate Brewery IPA at The White Building (Unit 7, Queen’s Yard, 43 White Post Lane) and catch a view of the Olympic stadium on the opposite side of the waterway.

Designed originally to be the lungs of smog-choked working class East London, Victoria Park is an 86-hectare green space bordering Bethnal Green, Bow and Hackney. You can easily spend a day taking in this pretty, well-maintained park. Don’t miss the romantic houseboats moored along the Regent’s Canal to the west of the park, the Chinese pagoda, the new skate park and adventure playground to the east of the park. There’s also a boating lake and the Pavilion Cafe (Victoria Park, Old Ford Road) which sells Square Mile coffee and does the meanest brunch menu in all of East London.