Hello, new favourite bakery!

The Dusty Empire

The Dusty Knuckle is a cult artisan bakery in Dalston with a second outpost in Green Lanes in Haringey. It’s the Dalston location – their home base – I visited, though I’m definitely earmarking the Green Lanes outpost for another time.

It’s a bakery of many hats: first, of course, they sells a mighty fine assortment of artisan breads and pastries, and oh my, just look at those pastries! And their potato sourdough bread is legendary. It’s all baked in-house, and you can see (and smell – mmmmmm) the large open plan kitchen at the back.

They have a mobile bakery service, too, that visits various spots around their home base, and also a stall at Leytonstone Farmers Market on Sundays.

The Dusty Knuckle is also a fine coffee shop and breakfast spot. At lunchtime, they sell soups, salads and beautiful sandwiches. On selected evenings, the Haringay site morphs into a pizza restaurant (they do delivery, too, if you’re lucky enough to live in the area). [If you’d rather have daytime pizza, there’s Circle and Slice in Whitechapel, and the Breadstall food truck in Battersea/ Clapham.]

They run classes in bread-making, fermentation and pasta-making. They have a cookbook on sale. Merch, too.

And last, but certainly not least, the Dusty Knuckle is also a social enterprise. They offer training and employment to young people who have struggled to enter the workplace, be it because of lack of education, a criminal record, or domestic violence.

The Dusty Knuckle: practical info

Website: https://www.thedustyknuckle.com/

Address: Dalston: Abbot St, E8 3DP | Haringay: 429 Green Lanes, N4 1HA

On Google Maps: Dalston location | Haringay location

How to find the Dalston location: on Kingsland Road, find the McDonald’s between Dalston Kingsland and Dalston Junction stations. Walk down the street next to it. If it looks like a dead end street, that’s because it is. Keep to the right-hand side, and you’ll cross into the Bootyard.

Nearest stop to Dusty Knuckles Dalston: Dalston Junction (Windrush line), Dalston Kingsland (Mildmay line)

And also: the Dusty Knuckle is dog friendly

What’s on the menu at the Dusty Knuckle?

Yes, let’s talk about the food. The Dusty Knuckle has a daily menu of giganormous sandwiches, soups and pastries, as well as coffee and teas, of course. The pastry range has some unusual offering, orange and poppy seeds Danish for example, and they all look scrumptious. (Are the cinnamon buns as good as the ones at Buns from Home? Mmmmmm, this will require some thorough testing, I think…)

The sandwiches are made from the in-house focaccia and the fillings change every now and again (bye bye chicken with lemon and olives, hello meatballs with raclette and mustard crème fraîche). You can also get a cheese toastie or a salad (not necessarily vegan, though).

They do take away, and there’s also the option to eat in – if you can find a table… It’s BUSY!!!!!!! It’s a lovely space, too, if you like the raw industrial look, which I do. Be warned it can be pretty loud, though, and it helps if you like house music, haha.

There’s also a terrace outside, which is as busy as the space inside, and shares the same soundtrack. They share the space with Acme Fire Cult, the …er…cult… barbecue restaurant, and independent Dalston brewery 40FT. It’s a little alternative food court! The space is called the Bootyard: formerly a derelict car park, now a space for community start-ups nurtured by the Bootstrap charity.

A mini review of the Greens and Romesco sandwich

I had the Greens and Romesco sandwich, and here’s what I thought.

The short version: never has so much cabbage tasted so good.

The (only slightly) long(er) version: the filling is basically a salad: 3 types of cabbages slathered in romesco sauce. The focaccia bread is a perfect foil to the filling – well, focaccia is a perfect foil to many things! It’s a less than perfect container, though, hence the importance of finding a spot for unwrapping. (Tip: the tall tables at the side are good for that.) The dressing seeps into the bread as you eat, do that you end up with a deeply flavoured focaccia with a delicious chewy crust. Yummy!

Where to go from there?

Looking for more brilliant sandwiches? Try Dom’s Subs location in Hackney, just down the road, or pay a visit to Italo deli in Vauxhall.

Looking for more things to do in the area? You could hop on the Windrush line and travel down to Hoxton, for the Museum of the Home, and then to Shoreditch High Street, to browse records in Rough Trade East and sample the most iconic bagels in London (trains from Dalston Junction). Or you could make the short trip (one stop!) to Hackney and visit Sutton House, one of London’s most special historical houses (trains from Dalston Kingsland to Hackney Central).