These Café Cecilia recipes will have you planning a trek to Hackney
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Last year I stumbled upon a green-colored cookbook and fell in love. This summer, I knew I had to make my way to Hackney.
Each year the L.A. Times Food section combs through dozens upon dozens of cookbooks to bring you an end-of-year guide to the best of them, and in 2024, Café Cecilia’s was one of my undeniable favorites. Chic and full of accessible recipes for the kinds of dishes I’d like to eat year-round, it introduced me to chef-owner Max Rocha’s Irish-by-way-of-Italy-and-France restaurant and I needed a true taste.
Los Angeles Times Food names the best cookbooks of 2024, a year of exploring the world, finding home, lots of desserts and several titles from L.A. authors.
In July I got my chance. I was visiting the U.K. for the first time in six years, seeing family and — OK, the real impetus — the Oasis reunion. But from a culinary perspective, it was just as much about making a trip to the light-dappled Café Cecilia, which sits along Regent’s Canal in the East London borough of Hackney.
My cousin, my friends and my partner and I all filed in at a long wooden table adjacent to the semi-open kitchen and had one of my best meals of the year: sage and anchovy fritti, the batter airy and crisp; mutton croquettes, fried to golden and dunked in mustard sauce; buttery in-shell scallops with peas and lardo; a plank of sugarcoated fried pudding with a moat of custard.
“I want to live and eat in Rocha’s world forever,” I thought, and then remembered his debut cookbook: We all can.
“We have people calling up asking about the recipes!” Rocha said. He left the music industry to cook in the legendary London kitchens of St. John and the River Café, and never imagined these successes, be it his own restaurant celebrating four years this month or a cookbook so popular it’s already being reprinted.
At a recent wedding, fellow guests approached him to talk about his book and what they’d been cooking from it.
“It’s really helped the restaurant,” he told me, “because we’ve never had a PR company — apart from the book — so we rely heavily on word of mouth. It’s been such a positive thing for us.”
Guests travel from Australia, New York, Japan, Ireland, Korea and other locales including, of course, Los Angeles. Perhaps it has something to do with the restaurant’s cross-cultural flavors. It’s also stylish, with his sister, fashion designer Simone Rocha, creating the uniforms. It’s a real family affair.
Café Cecilia is named for Rocha’s paternal grandmother, who hailed from Hong Kong. Though he never knew her well, the chef sees her as the reason for his ability to pursue his dreams at all: She saved the money to buy her son a ticket to London. Without her, Rocha said, none of this would have been possible. Now he and his father operate the restaurant together in her memory, as well as in ode to Rocha’s maternal inspirations, namely his Irish grandmother Margaret. She taught his mother — and Rocha — how to cook scones, cakes and soda bread, and how to fall in love with working in a kitchen. Rocha draws on these touchstones, as well as recipes from the restaurant’s surrounding England and broader Europe.
“I’d say it’s like fancy canteen food,” he says.
It’s hard to quantify, he adds, but there’s one thing everyone seems to agree on: It’s endlessly craveable. Here are two recipes from the Café Cecilia cookbook to get you started. Think of these as the gateway to the book and then, ideally, a trip to Hackney of your own.
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Guinness bread
The most popular item — found on nearly every table — at Café Cecilia, Rocha’s Guinness bread is comforting and hearty but somehow fairly light in texture. His recipe is a riff on his mother’s, which is much sweeter. It’s hard to find freshly and well-made Irish soda bread in London, and harder still in L.A. Thankfully this recipe is straightforward, quick and exceedingly delicious. (It’s also fairly adaptable: If you’re lacking buttermilk, sub in Greek plain yogurt.) Serve with a decadent smear of good butter, for best results.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour and 30 minutes. Makes one loaf.
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Mussels and datterinis on toast
Rocha loves this dish and so do I. It’s a sort of spin on seafood stew and loaded toast, and one that Rocha feels is all about hospitality: Shell the mussels yourself before serving to your guests and loved ones, removing the work for them. The mussels braise in dry cider and butter, while the sweet, small tomatoes roast in olive oil and garlic. When those pan sauces combine over garlicky aioli, it’s an unforgettable confluence of flavors that might just leave you licking the plate clean.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour and 15 minutes. Serves two.
Looking to spice up your week’s cooking even more? Check out L.A. Times Food’s spice blend collaboration with Burlap & Barrel: California Heat, Salty Angeleno and L.A. Asada are a trio of spices, each inspired by the flavors of Los Angeles.
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