Berneliu Uzeiga, London: ‘A Lithuanian experience I’d recommend to anybody’

Photograph by Sonja Horsman

The Shepherd’s Inn is nestled within the vast expanse of an Asda car park that appears to stretch all the way from the Beckton bus station in east London to Aberdeen. It’s an unassuming structure, its sturdy walls and rhomboid roof suggesting a local radio station erected sometime in the early 80s. If it seems odd to compare this edifice to any place a shepherd has ever lived, the fact it also houses Berneliu Uzeiga, London’s premier Lithuanian restaurant, may seem equally unlikely. But that ignores the sizeable number of émigrés who have settled in the area since the mid-2000s, granting this Little Lithuania the unimprovable sobriquet “Bektoniškės” among its Baltic population.

Still, we very nearly don’t get in for our Friday night reservation, because my friend Kieran and I are greeted by two very large doormen asking for ID. Neither of us have carried age verification for a very long time, and I begin to worry if Kieran was the correct companion. He’s excellent company and knows more about food than just about anyone I know, with a particular fondness for the often neglected thrills of eastern European cuisine. He’s also a 29-year-old who looks about 15, and I presume this is why our cries of adulthood meet scepticism from two men who look like they’ve been cast to stand between Keanu Reeves and the President’s daughter in a John Wick film.. Luckily, a camera is produced, and having offered intimate personal details to a machine, we’re ushered in. “Sorry,” says the larger of the courteous giants, “live music tonight.” We find our seats, wondering why this music might require beefed-up security.

Berneliu Uzeiga is a chain. There are six restaurants in Lithuania and two in the UK (the other is in Peterborough, obviously), all of which offer decadent furnishings, heritage Lithuanian produce and live music most weekends. We’ve arranged to come when singer Vaidas Jonikas is on the bill, and he’s sound-checking a sprightly repertoire of upbeat pop numbers as we order some very tasty Volfas Engelman lagers, which come served in UEFA cup-sized glasses.

According to the Lithuania state broadcaster LRT, Beckton’s diasporic character is waning of late, thanks to Brexit, rising rents and the inevitable scattering of migrant communities once they find their feet and inevitably depart. No such flight is apparent in Berneliu Uzeiga itself – it appears to be doing a very brisk trade indeed. Though not qualified to conduct a formal census, I’d guess that almost every other person among the 100+ strong crowd in the dining area is Lithuanian. I don’t know what the Baltic equivalent of a gringo is, but Kieran and I spend our evening very much in that cohort.

Our charming server, Andrius, is delighted at our request to have the most authentic taste of Lithuania possible between here and, well, Peterborough. He immediately recommends a beer snack, keptos duonos, fried strips of toast rubbed with garlic and smeared with melted cheese. They are chewy and delicious, complementing perfectly the two further rounds of lager we sink before the main courses arrive.

This would be the sharing platter for two, a giant wooden disc bearing eight dishes. We begin with its two soups, both served in glasses on either side of a bin-lid-sized tray. The first is the šaltibarščiai, a bright pink borscht made with beetroot and dill, topped with a wedge of hard-boiled egg. What looks like an eggy Gaviscon tastes like the best beetroot-flavoured tzatziki you’ve ever had, deliciously fresh and inviting. After that comes a glass of baravykienė, a warm mushroom soup whose thickness seems slightly less adaptable to being served in a shot glass, but which is delicious nonetheless.

Next we hit the small plates, a majestic odyssey through the potato in nearly all its forms. Sumptuous bulviniai blynai, a grated potato pancake served with mushroom sauce, has its counterpart in the pork-filled kėdainių blynai. There’s žemaičių blynai, a delicious meat-stuffed, mashed-potato pancake, and the karčemos vėdarai, two exquisite hockey-pucks of potato-stuffed sausage served with a delectably oily slathering of fried pancetta. All are beautifully cooked and seasoned, although the cumulative effect may weigh heavy on those who bore of potatoes. Thankfully, I don’t associate with such people and I relish every stodgy bite.

I quiz Kieran on pronunciations, and he dutifully offers what help he can. He raves about the curd-cheese chocolate Quark bars he buys in his local Lithuanian supermarket, and baffles me with the fact that the name of the nation’s parliament, the Seimas, is curiously similar to my own. Our new best friend Andrius interrupts to offer us some Lithuanian Gold vodka to cut through the tuberous heft we’ve just consumed.

The last two dishes on the platter are the mamos kotletai (mama’s cutlet) and the cepelinai su mėsa (zeppelin meat dumpling). The former might be my favourite plate of the evening, a hearty meatball topped with cream sauce alongside diced beetroot and shards of pickle. The latter dish, however, sounds a rare dud note, a dumpling fashioned from shiny, compacted mashed potato that boasts a rubbery consistency and a taste too bland.

The vodka goes down so well we order another, just as Vaidas Jonikas begins his set. Musically, it’s pitched somewhere between “Eurovision perennial” and “jarringly upbeat closing titles to sad anime”, and it’s delivered at a volume the NHS might find inadvisable but which Berneliu Uzeiga’s patrons relish, not least the dozen or so who immediately flock to the small dance floor. Merry from our spirit and spud feast, we find it hard to argue with their judgment.

Our dessert is the lietiniai blyneliai su varške, a cheese-filled crêpe served with yoghurt and jam. Though the sweet pancake is perfectly crisp and flinty, the filling underwhelms, but we are past quibbling. Andrius, for whom we would now both gladly die, adopts a conspiratorial air before offering us some Samanė, a 50% ABV moonshine he assures us is “homemade”. We knock one back, then another, and find the room swimming pleasantly to Jonikas’s stirring vocals.

Our bill comes to a little over £100 a head, including a generous tip and a tally of drinks that was maybe (definitely) overdoing it, meaning more respectable diners could have the same enjoyment for half that price. Personally, I think this would be cheating yourself. A night in Berneliu Uzeiga is an experience I’d recommend to anybody, and one best surrendered to with a full glass, in full song and at full volume.

Berneliu Uzeiga, Shepherd’s Inn, 16 Mary Rose Mall, London E6 5LX (020 8127 7080; berneliaiuk.co.uk). Starters from £9, dumplings from £12, mains from £16, tasting platter £20pp