Restaurant Review: Crate Brewery, Hackney Wick

The Olympic Park in Stratford, London, is home to the London Stadium, the Aquatics Centre, the Lee Valley VeloPark and other venues that were used for events at the London 2012 Olympics. I’d never been there before – I did manage to get tickets to one Olympic event, but it was elsewhere – the beach volleyball on Horseguards’ Parade near Westminster.

 

I was at a work event nearby recently and my colleague had booked a pub restaurant for us to have some dinner afterwards – the Crate Brewery in Hackney Wick.

 

It’s a surprisingly long walk across one side of the Olympic Park to the other so I was pretty thirsty by the time I got to the pub. It’s right next to the river (or canal? I wasn’t sure), with big wooden tables outside (with benches, sharing style); inside is fairly industrial-looking with big beer crates and seats made from wooden pallets and a bar made of railway sleepers. They are a brewery as well as a pub/restaurant, and you can book brewery tours, hire the space for an event and buy their beer online.
 

 

Their food menu seems to consist entirely of pizza (with a few salad and bar snack options) – all made from scratch and with some quite unusual toppings like sweet potato, stilton and walnut, Kashmiri dahl or Middle Eastern lamb, along with more traditional margherita and salami.

 

We went at the end of summer and sat outside enjoying the last of the nice weather, sharing several pizzas between our group. Unfortunately at this stage I hadn’t quite announced my pregnancy so none of my colleagues knew – which meant I was very limited in what pizza toppings I could eat, but couldn’t explain why!

 

The pizzas had a thin, flat base, and weren’t that gooey – good if you like the drier-style pizza though I’m quite partial to a deep-pan myself. I’d recommend a whole pizza or equivalent per person – they cost around £9-£11 each- but it’s definitely the sort of food you can share between friends while enjoying a beer (or something non-alcoholic otherwise!).

 

This place is quite out of my way so I’m unlikely to come back but it made for a nice end to the evening with a nice view of the river and being a stone’s throw away from the Olympic park.