Frizzante

Been there to have some coffee and cake. The cake was ok, espresso was good, location really nice. The service was though quite bad and didn’t really make you feel welcome. Hot food looks really tasty. Maybe that what I should try next time.

best enjoeyed after a stroll at the flower market, go there and enjoy the wholesomeness.

Typical lame English restaurant.
Nice staff. But tasteless and bland food. Nice outdoor seating. I think you have to be either high or hungover in order to appreciate this place breakfast option.

Funky place! Very unique … I had the half chicken roast shared with my mother but £18 is a bit steep for half a chicken… Love the idea of all sustainable organic locally sourced vibe. Great for family and kids. Very alternative indie east london creative customers. If you want to escape the city and try something new while feeling like you are on a farm give this place a whirl !

Amazing.
Simple. Fresh. Friendly
Frizzante offers hands down: no bull, food prepared with a flare.
As previous Unilocalers have described, Frizzante is Unassuming. Set in Hackney City Farm, Frizzante has all the charm of a city farm café and all the flare and delicious offerings of a rustic Mediterranean restaurant in it’s own right.
We found Frizzante looking for something simple and local to cater for a large event at the nearby Troxy in Limehouse. Feeding 400 people is a daunting task, but the staff and managers of Frizzante made the whole event effortless. They were incredibly organized, even going to the venue before hand to check preparation areas and offered incredible choice to us. Even when confronted with additional dietary needs, they offered solutions with no fuss.
On the day itself, they gave up their time for no extra cost to help us prepare and serve the food to the 400 participants (which left to our own devises would probably not have gone so well). Given that we are a charity and the event was not-​for-​profit we are immensely grateful for the amazing generosity of their time and services.
The food: A wonderful pesto pasta with articoke (MmmmMmmm), pasta bake with chicken for the meat eaters and a wonderful salad even my best friend (who does not eat anything remotely green) enjoyed. All topped off with the best, brownie ever. And I mean that, there were 400 people at this event and all I could hear was a collective «MmmmMMmmYummmYumm.»
The food was just beyond our expectations and I can’t wait to go back, sit down in the restuarant and enjoy a meal in the comfort of Frizzante itself. (And have another scoop of their Peanut butter icecream).
Yum.

I’ve always been very pleased with ordering from Frizzante. They have a kindly and personable business manner and create organic and slow food dishes which are almost always delicious. They go a bit too far out onto the exotic with some menu items for my tastes but they still come highly recommended. Their restaurant at Hackney City Farm is lovely.

For me, food and live music do not necessarily go hand in hand. On too many occasions, live music interferes with one’s enjoyment of the meal rather than enhance it — either being of mediocre quality or so loud as to prevent proper conversation. I therefore viewed the musicians who were limbering up as part of Frizzante’s Agriturismo evening (every Thursday) with a degree of suspicion. I needn’t have worried. Like the rest of the ambiance, the music was pretty much spot on, of sufficient quality to be interesting and enjoyable whether as a focal point or simply as a background soundtrack to your evening.
The food (Italian as befits an Agriturismo evening) also hit the right notes. I opted for the meaty options — tagliatelle with a pork/​beef ragu followed by slow cooked beef cheeks. Of the two the cheeks were the highlight. Real care had obviously been taken over their preparation of the dish — the beef was beautifully moist and tender, really showing that even the most humble of ingredients can be transformed in the right hands. A further highlight came in the form of desert — a rich chocolate mouse paired with a salted caramel sauce and freshly baked biscuits. Each element was well made, resulting in a fitting end to a good meal. The packed dining room also seemed to be enjoying the food just as much as me judging by the contented murmurings which accompanied the aforementioned music and the clean plates heading back to the kitchen.
The only downside, for me at least, was the wine list which is best described as limited (3 fairly uninspiring options of white and red to choose between). Not a massive problem but I will investigate bringing my own bottle with me next time I visit.

Delish breakfast. Huge portions. Very comfy and casual. Can see how this place could be a wonderful weekend habit.

Frizzante made me experience the classic case of really-wanting-to-try-a-restaurant-because-you’ve-heard-so-much-about-it-but-then-your-super-high-expectations-didn’t-quite-get-fulfilled! (You follow me here?)
Frizzante — it’s a restaurant within the Hackney City Farm and it’s really quite the alternative space. In fact, I really like this kind of Berkeley/​San Francisco-​vibe that this space radiates: open seating, open kitchen, lots of more or less alternative mummies with their respective kids running through the place. (While the last bit was a bit annoying, I do admit that it’s a city farm and you might not get around screaming kids).
As for the food, I was not quite as thrilled. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a very healthy portion of vegetable frittata with a sizeable salad on the side — but: the taste just wasn’t there. It tasted a little bland and not very exciting. On the other hand, the brownie was quite tasty, if not a little too undercooked in the middle.
My overall judgement: I would go back, because I would like to support this establishment as I am truly behind its agenda, but I just hope that the food’s going to be a little bit more exciting next time.

So unassuming, yet so amazing. The food here is always good for breakfast/​brunch, but it is simply out of this world when it comes time for the Thursday night dinner.
My flatmate helped me score a rare table for one of the November Thursday evening meals and we were not disappointed. My lovely dining companion noted that the free mulled wine was the best she’d ever had — and I would have to agree. Both recipes for the starter ravioli should be retired and enshrined in the food hall of fame. The lamb wasn’t half bad either.
Really you can’t go wrong in this rustic, relaxed and reasonably priced place. Just don’t book my spot!

Along with being caterers, Frizzante is the café’ at Hackney City Farms and what a delightful place it is! I had been to HCF a number of times before, but never had occasion to have a meal there.
Frizzante uses local, fresh and seasonal ingredients to prepare standard breakfast fare (eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes) as well as sweet breakfast items (pancakes, waffles, etc) and delicious Italian dishes (risotto alla milanese, pappardelle with chicken livers and onion, mozzarella salads, lots of vegetarian options and much more). Mind you, on Sunday, due to the large number of customers, they only make scrambled eggs.
A small group of us was there for brunch on a recent sunny Sunday. My companions each had a breakfast dish. One had the vegetarian breakfast (£6.25) and the other had the farm breakfast (£6.75). Both were good sized portions and the samples I had were delicious. I couldn’t help myself and had to have the pappardelle (@£8). Very good with lots of chicken livers and perfectly balanced with the onions and grated parmiggiano and freshly cracked pepper. Maybe a tad too much olive oil, but I can overlook that. We also had their Sicilian lemonade — fresh squeezed lemons with just a tad of sugar — and WoW! So good and refreshing. Their cappuccino was very good as well, with a thick and creamy head.
The ambiance was lively, unpretentious, friendly and the clientele varied, but overall everyone was happy to be there. We were lucky in scoring a table on the covered patio, but there are lots of tables inside as well as a few outside. Many of the tables are big, so don’t be surprised if you end up sharing with others. Expect lots of families and screaming children — if that bugs you, then don’t go. But there were also an equal number of hipsters and just regular folks.
On Thursday nights, Frizzante is open for dinner and every so often, they hold agriturismo dinners (agriturismo are Italian farms open for farm stays where, generally, fantastic slow food meals are prepared for guests with ingredients straight from the farm) with entertainment, roasted meats and all sorts of other delicious sounding food. I would like to check out this event and I’ll report back. In any event, I’m looking forward to my next time there. And don’t forget to take a wander in the farm itself. It’s a great place to spend some time out of the urban setting.

This Italian restaurant, tucked into an unassuming building at Hackney City Farm, makes me happy for so many reasons. I went there for one of their Thursday night meals and the food was truly fantastic, as well as being local and seasonal and served by a charming and friendly group of people. Even my dining companion, who has actually been living in Florence for the past year, was astonished by the quality of the food.
We had wild boar salsiccia with a phenomenal parsley salsa verde and a delicious homemade bread and a grilled peach, ricotta, and homegrown rocket salad for starters. We also munched on some delicious focaccia while we cracked open our BYO wine bottle.
Then came fresh free-​range egg pasta with crispy speck and zucchini and a vegetarian timballo with onion, eggplant, and smoked cheese. I want to marry crispy speck and have lots of babies with it. It’s that freaking good.
Oh and we also had a fantastic I-​love-​summer style salad of fresh and Rainbow-​Brite-​colored Isle of Wight tomatoes with olive oil and basil leaves. But the crowning jewel of the evening was dessert… a mountainous meringue-​like Pavlova split in half and stuffed with fresh English strawberries and cream.
I don’t even know how to express how good this dessert is. The pavlova was an airy cloud of dissolving cotton candy sweetness, the berries were perfectly juicy and bursting with flavor, and I would happily bathe in this cream if I had a team of elves armed with electric mixers to whip it for me on the daily. Perfection in a dessert.
Unfortunately the menu changes weekly, so you may never get to experience this magic. But go anyway for the Thursday night dinner. It’s a lovely yet casual space with checked tablecloths and random posters and an old piano in the dining room. It’s like you went over to your Italian grandmothers house for dinner after she went to culinary school. Can someone hook me up with a relative like that?

I guess there are two locations for this café, but I’m writing about the one at the Hackney City Farm which I’ve gone to since I moved here as I walk over to Broadway Market. I usually just go to look at the biggest pig I’ve ever seen and laugh at the geese, but never made it into the café…
Well, we finally made it into the café and now I’m afraid I’m going to want to go there every Sunday. The food was amazing; fresh and interesting dishes. I had some type of ragu filled rice balls with salad and the boyfriend had a the pork shoulder. Also, watching the cute, hip families with their adorable kids is a treat. Especially since I can walk away, kid free, afterwards.
My only complaint (and I’m not taking any stars away for it), is that I can’t tell where they get their food. I had assumed that being located on a farm meant that they probably source their ingredients from local farmers but there’s nothing on their website which says as much. So I can’t say where they’re getting their food from, but I will say that it tastes like the good stuff.