Tasting Britain was invited down to Brick Lane’s Fika for the launch of their Crayfish Festival – which runs between 30th July and 16th August (which is an estimate – this supposedly depends on when they run out of Crayfish!).As for the Crayfish festival, £35 will get you infinite Crayfish, pickled fishies, pate and Gravadlax (but no drinks). For the press preview we sung some songs, got to meet the owner (who is lovely) and I got to work on my crayfish shelling technique (which, no matter how good you seem to get at it, ends messily). It was amazing.
A little more about Fika: They’re a Swedish restaurant (and probably the only one on Brick Lane!) with a very eccentric vibe (look at the walls!) and a menu that is made up on the main part of traditional Swedish foods (though there are a few things you might not have tried) . Fika has been there since 2008 and has a very hip, East London feel to it – except with stronger Swedish accents and stuff. All the staff, as far as i could tell, are from Scandinavia and the place has some of that slightly idiosyncratic humour that the Swedes are known for (i.e staff wearing shirts that say ‘work shirt’ and just the general feeling of the place…things are not being taken too seriously here)
In Swedish a ‘Fika’ is type of break with social interaction that the Swedes take ‘very seriously’. I think it originally referred to a coffee break but is now used to describe any kind of ‘time out’. Speaking of coffee, downstairs at Fika strongly feels like a coffee shop, but if you head on upstairs (up a VERY steep stairwell) there is a intimate rooftop terrace which feels a bit like some kind of forest grotto on a rooftop in Shoreditch and is fantastic in summer. Since it is summer, I want to hang out there and drink (more) aakavit (a Swedish spirit which Fika has a pretty impressive selection of – see pix).