Lucky & Joy

Fun restaurants are hard to come by, but fun restaurants with good food are even more elusive. It’s an oh-so-rare combination that too often weighs more heavily on one side than the other. At Lucky & Joy it feels perfectly even. Put it this way: if an intrepid explorer came through the Lower Clapton Road and stopped by this neon-hued space, they'd soon be deftly swapping an ancient golden head for a hollowed out pineapple stuffed full of fried rice.

This is a good-time restaurant. The flavour-packed Chinese-influenced menu and the bright aesthetic work in an entertaining tandem to stress this. Roasted sprouts packed with punches of lime, chilli, and coriander is matched by the pinks, the blues, and the greens that light the restaurant. Cold sesame noodles will hook you after one bite, but so too will the TV playing an aquarium on loop. Maybe you’ll buy one of their t-shirts on the wall, because you’ve dropped turnip cake and eggs all down yours.

All together, it makes for one, big, disco fishtank, Gaspar Noé-ish, sensory party. If Friday night were a restaurant then it would look and taste almost identical to Lucky & Joy.