Numerous articles have appeared praising this corner of Hackney. No longer a "grotty backwater", Dalston has become "a throbbing nocturnal destination", with attractions as diverse as a "moustache bar" and a club under a furniture store. Now that Shoreditch has fallen victim to its own success, this is apparently where the artists and hedonists are fleeing.

If the centre of cool continues to drift in this direction down the Kingsland Road, perhaps, by 2057, my birthplace of Enfield will become home to such insouciant japery, but right now it is Dalston’s turn, and given that I live ten minutes’ walk away, I find myself a little bit fashionable.

Still, as I say, going for dinner on Saturday night in the esteemed local Turkish restaurant, the Stone Cave, you might be forgiven for wondering. As its name suggests, the Stone Cave is contoured in plaster to resemble a kitsch grotto, and, for giggles, a belly dancer periodically performs a routine with a scimitar.

It is the sort of thing you might find in a half-forgotten, Turkish-themed corner of Disneyworld. It also serves some of the finest kebabs known to man and is raucously entertaining. When I asked our waiter how he felt to be at the centre of cool, he looked perplexed and palmed me off with a special edition Stone Cave 2009 calendar.

Post dinner, my friends and I walked down the road to the newly opened Moustache Bar, but finding it closed pending a new license - a common local theme - we went back in the other direction to the Haggerston, a newly refurbished pub. This is more what the trendmakers had in mind: an unpretentious, unassuming little bar with a pleasantly humming atmosphere. A fine place to drink - but a destination boozer?

In truth, what unites Dalston’s best spots - from the Jazz Bar (free to enter and open indecently late) to Barden’s Bourdoir, from the Mangal kebab house to the Arcola Theatre - is that they retain a low-key, local feel. If you arrive in Hoxton or Camden, say, you gather pretty quickly where you’re supposed to head. Dalston’s secrets lurki behind unmarked doors, disguised in sham caves.

This state of affairs cannot last long. If Shoreditch’s transformation into a crass hipster’s theme park is anything to go by, Dalston’s status will last until about 2011 - when the East London Line extension opens and Tesco finally puts all the local shopkeepers out of business. Meanwhile, if anyone finds a Stone Cave calendar lying around, let me know - I think I dropped it somewhere.