Fern opens in East Croydon

New restaurant, Fern opens in East Croydon

Fern is the new kid on the block in East Croydon, only opening its doors in March this year. It’s the latest of Bart & Taylor’s three venues across the country, joining their much-loved local Croydon favourite, Mr Fox and a farm-to-table food venue in Northumberland, Adam and Eve. The team at Bart & Taylor are on a mission to deliver hospitality opportunities in under-served areas around the UK, with an aim of helping to provide structure and creativity to communities. They believe strongly that world-class hospitality and career opportunities shouldn’t be reserved for a postcode. We love the ethos and we now love the food…

Fern is a brand new neighbourhood restaurant and bar that’s open all day, every day. It’s located on the ground floor of Ten Degrees in East Croydon and boasts a relaxed atmosphere, with exposed brick, floor-to-ceiling windows and gold accents that pair very nicely with all the green plants here.

Guests can enjoy contemporary sharing plates from the all-day menu, which mixes flavours from across the globe, whilst using locally sourced ingredients where possible. The menu is split into ‘Land, Sea and Plants’, and it’s recommended – for two people – that around five plates is ideal for the table.

Fern excels in its excellent vegetable-forward section, which has a regularly changing selection of six to eight vegetarian and vegan options that compliment both the land and sea plates.

Head Chef Valentino Gaio leads the kitchen team in delivering high-quality sharing plates. From the Plants offering, we strongly recommend the Raw Rainbow Carrot Salad. Made with radish, beansprouts, red quinoa, coriander, soy and sesame dressing, it’s got an amazing umami flavour that’ll make you keep going back for more.

From the Sea, highlights include the refreshing Sea Bream Ceviche served with pomegranate, coriander, grapefruit and chilli. It’s bright and colourful, zesty and has a great balance between the kick from the chilli and the sweetness from the pomegranate. We’d also happily return for the Market Fish of the Day, which on this occasion was a perfectly cooked sea bass that was nicely crisp skin-side and soft and delicious fish-side.

The Land section has a lot of very strong contenders for star of the show, but if you’re here for lunch then look no further than the Cobble Lane Cured Charcuterie. The meat offering was bresaola, coppa and mortadella, which came with focaccia, sweet onion chutney and pickles.

The cocktails here are also superb. Among the Fern signatures are the must-try Margarita Verde (Casamigos Blanco, cucumber, apple, lime, agave, dill and coriander) and the Smoky Paloma (The Lost Explorer Mezcal, grapefruit soda and tomato salt).

Led by Yaw Asante, the drinks programme at Fern challenges the best bars around the capital. Asante takes inspiration from punchy classics and adds signature twists on favourites. The Margarita Verde – along with the Dusk Daiquiri – are offered with a Lyre’s or Seedlip spirit replacement making for some of the best non-alcoholic serves in the area, too.

The cocktail menu extends into highballs and spritzes as well as a stellar wine offering curated by co-founder Aiste Bart.

As mentioned, Fern is the third venue by Bart & Taylor, run by founders Andrew Taylor and Aiste Bart. Andrew provides 18 years of hospitality experience with a strong background in commercial operations and marketing, whilst Aiste has over 15 years of hospitality experience, leading and training front-of-house teams and food and beverage menu concept development.

Together, the duo is the force behind Fern, complimenting one another and creating the ideal restaurant operator.

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