Smoking Goat

Smoking Goat is Ben Chapman’s other Thai restaurant, run with Brian Hannon, and it is the loud one. The original was a tiny Soho room that closed not long after this Shoreditch site opened in 2017, and the format here is bigger, later and built around drinking as much as eating.

The category is Thai drinking food, which in practice means bold, salty, chilli-heavy plates designed to be eaten with cold beer rather than admired. If Kiln, from the same stable, is about fire and precision, Smoking Goat is about volume and impact.

The fish sauce chilli wings are the signature and one of the most copied dishes in London: fried hard, lacquered with honey and fish sauce, dusted with chilli. The twelve-hour smoked short rib is the other order, and the fried egg rice is the thing you add when you realise you underordered, which you will have.

It is noisy, it fills up, and it works better in a group than as a quiet dinner for two. It also keeps later hours than most of its neighbours, which makes it useful when the evening has drifted.

Our verdict: the best chicken wings in London, and the most fun you can have eating Thai food in Shoreditch.

Go if: you want big flavours, cold beer and noise. Skip if: you want subtlety or a quiet table.

Go in a group. Shoreditch High Street, E1.