Cafe Cecilia
Restaurant · Haggerston ·
Stylish hangout crafting breakfast & lunch, including baked goods & gourmet plates.
Stylish hangout crafting breakfast & lunch, including baked goods & gourmet plates.
"At its best, Café Cecilia’s cooking feels inspired by the easy-to-fall-in-love-with elegance and simplicity of St. John, one of the restaurants where head chef Max Rocha first worked, with some Irish influence. Sage and anchovy fritti? Sensational. Chocolate and Guinness cake? Please. Beige and brown are always in vogue at this canalside spot in London Fields. Especially when it comes to the deep-fried bread and butter pudding with cold custard." - jake missing
"There’s only one thing better than a Tabi ballerina pictured holding a Vogue and that’s a Tabi boot holding one of Cafe Cecilia’s chips. The London Fields couture canteen is a different kind of celebrity haunt—head chef Max Rocha is from something of a familial fashion dynasty, after all. This isn’t tabloid stuff. You won’t spot Beyoncé here face down in deep-fried bread and butter pudding. No, this is for your creative directors, your Royal Academy graduates. Just make sure you get the Guinness bread ice cream." - jake missing, sinead cranna, heidi lauth beasley, rianne shlebak
"Price: $$ Since Cafe Cecilia opened in 2021, it has maintained a steady flow of plaudits from all the coolest places, in part because of chef-owner Max Rocha’s connection to the world of fashion (father John and sister Simone are designers). However, there’s a surfeit of substance as well as style in this stark, minimalist cafe-bistro. And playfulness, too, seen in the likes of recreations of chicken Kievs or deep-fried bread-and-butter pudding in a pool of cold custard. Rocha and his staff are direct descendaents of the ingredients-obsessed tradition of St. John, the River Cafe, and Quo Vadis. Like peer Anna Tobias’s cooking at Cafe Deco, Rocha’s can be colored a bit beige, but it deserves the attention it has received. Must-try dish: Do not miss the steak and chips with peppercorn sauce, nor fruit tart at dessert." - Adam Coghlan
"Nabbing a spot at one of Café Cecilia’s window-side tables early in the morning is one of the savviest restaurant moves you can make in London Fields. The hip British-Irish spot hugs the Regent’s Canal and, like the Hackney waterside walkway, is a bustling scene come lunchtime. But this fashionable canteen is best first thing. A plate with a crisp, still glowing fried egg alongside black pudding and brown sauce always goes down a treat." - heidi lauth beasley, jake missing, rianne shlebak
"When your gut tells you that you should go for the onglet with peppercorn sauce and chips, you listen. Just as we listened when it told us to come back to Cafe Cecilia for lunch, having had a black pudding breakfast there the same morning. Despite its location, in a slick new build with cool marble white interiors, there’s a warmth about Cafe Cecilia. It’s in the fizzing green peppercorn sauce, it’s in the always-pleasant staff, and it’s in an Irish/modern European menu that leads with Guinness bread and butter." - jake missing, sinead cranna, daisy meager