Founded by LA-native Julian Denis, who is also behind Facing Heaven Chinese restaurant and dive bar Easy 8 in London Fields, Johnny Boy’s will be his tribute to the family-run neighbourhood joints of his childhood.
Described as a ‘not the overly fetishised American Diner, but the kind of everyday places that were lynchpins of immigrant communities’, Johnny Boy’s will occupy an old Thai café on Northwold Road and will serve an eclectic menu that references the melting pot of cuisines and cultures of Southern California.
It will initially open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday, and for breakfast and lunch on weekends, with dishes to include crab Tostada with crab-mayo, pea salsa, and carrot escabeche; pastrami dip with mustard pickles and consommé; patty Melt with caramelised onions, Russian dressing, Swiss and American cheese on rye bread; and fried chicken with mac salad, and Hawaiian roll
At weekends, the daytime menu will include burritos such as the All-Day Breakfast, comprising bacon, sausage or chorizo, eggs, tots, beans, cheese, salsa; and the Carne Asada, with grilled bavette, rice, beans cheese, salsa, as well as steak and eggs served with hash browns; chilaquiles verde - tortilla chips, salsa verde, chicken, beans, fried egg, cotija; and a more London-centric deluxe breakfast plate of bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, eggs, toast.
Sweet dishes will include French toast with whipped butter and maple syrup as well as donuts like the Maple Bar and Old Fashioned. In the American tradition, there will be bottomless filter coffee.
“As Mexican, Jewish, Greek, and Japanese enclaves popped up all over Southern California so developed a movement of family-run, DIY eateries that became neighbourhood focal points and second homes for many people growing up in these communities, just as they did for me,” says Denis.
“Greek families made a living cooking Mexican food for their neighbours, and vice versa. Flavours became borderless, blurred, and melded into something greater than the sum of their parts, serving the neighbourhood as a whole and offering something for everyone.”
Born and raised in Southern California to a Portuguese mother and Puerto Rican father, Denis spent much of his youth playing in punk bands before he got into cooking. Before moving to London in 2015, he worked in New York at Fung Tu on the Lower East Side, a modern Chinese restaurant headed by Jonathan Wu, formerly of Per Se, and Wilson Tang of Nom Wah Tea Parlour.
In 2017, he became head chef of Club Mexicana’s residency at Pamela in Dalston before launching Mao Chow as a pop-up later that year, which eventually evolved into Facing Heaven in March 2022. In 2023, he opened Easy 8, a neighbourhood dive bar serving cocktails, beer and LA-style tacos on Mare Street.
Johnny Boy’s opens on 4 July.