Kricket is heading to Shoreditch – which could see it do breakfast for the first time
The group, which is led by Rik Campbell and Will Bowlby, has taken on the former Apothecary East site on Charlotte Road, just off Great Eastern Street.
The new restaurant will follow hot on the heels of Kricket’s fourth restaurant, which has opened this month in Canary Wharf and marked the group’s first new restaurant opening since 2018.
The Shoreditch site, which was also once home to Merchant’s Tavern, Angela Hartnett's French, Spanish and Italian restaurant, presents a new opportunity for the modern Indian restaurant group, which intends to run it as an all-day venue for the first time, including serving breakfast.
Kricket Shoreditch will have a dining room to the rear of the venue that will be serve an a la carte menu similar to the group’s offer at its other restaurants as well as a bar at the front that will serve an all-day menu from 9am to 5pm and then a more drinks-led snack menu thereafter.
The intention is for the site to be used by customers throughout the day, whether to eat and drink, to work remotely, hold meetings, or socialise.
“It’s a beautiful site and the opportunity was too big to pass up,” says Campbell. “The site gives us the opportunity to do something a little bit different, not just with the design but with an all-day offering and create more of a lifestyle space for people to come throughout the day.
“When you’ve got 5,000sq ft and are paying £200,000 a year in rent you’ve got to make your asset sweat.”
The site will also be home to the group’s first private dining room, which the pair say will double up as a meeting room in the daytime.
Going for the breakfast buck
The all-day offer means that Kricket is likely to follow Indian restaurant Dishoom into the Indian breakfast space, an area in which the latter has had much success over the past decade.
“It won’t be at the same scale as Dishoom, but we will probably do something,” says Bowlby. “You’ve got to get people through the doors in the morning and serving coffee isn’t enough.”
While Kricket has never served breakfast at its restaurants, which are located in Brixton, White City, Canary Wharf, and Soho, the pair say it is something that they “have in their locker” having run an all-day restaurant at the annual Lost Village festival in Lincolnshire.
Dishes being served at the 100-cover restaurant for this year’s festival include breakfast items such as egg bhurji on toasted sourdough; the ‘full Kricket’ – jaggery glazed bacon chop, fried egg, chole, hash brown, mushroom, and toast - and a spiced granola with London honey, as well as an all-day dish of a Bombay toastie featuring Lincolnshire Poacher, potato, green chutney and piccalilli.
“We’ve had a breakfast menu in the locker for a while but not yet a site that we can execute it at,” says Bowlby. “We’ve got the menu ready to go, we’ve just been waiting for the right opportunity.”
Having met at university, Campbell and Bowlby launched their original Kricket site at Pop Brixton in 2015 and took the concept permanent in 2016 with a site in Soho.
A full interview with Bowlby and Campbell will be published next week
