The contrast between old and new in the Spitalfields Market area of Shoreditch.

Central London has forever been attracting tourists with its predictable itinerary for iconic attractions. It’s where everybody goes.

Most locals rarely even venture into London city, and when they do they’ll be complaining about map-wielding overrunning the streets, or city slickers emerging from pubs with a tidy profit from the latest recession.

The uncontrollable development of the skyline also raises eyebrows. Obnoxious shards of glass rise high, a dozen cranes compete to ruin photos, and you have to sell a kidney to afford a month’s rent.

No, for most Londoners, central London is a city in itself, an inconceivable place to be avoided. They’re about the suburbs, the succession of interlinking villages each with their individual style.

East London was once a decrepit place. Vilified in the media, derelict, and home only to nutters with extreme cockney accents. But that’s changed.

I’m in Dalston, ambling past the pop-up shops that opened over the summer. In a tiny space, a bearded man sells retro vinyl, a fruit smoothie bar holds an opening party, and a car park has been converted into a food market. DJs play a mixture of 1980s disco and funk, as food stalls sell their creations: Jamaican jerk chicken, Mexican tortillas and Ukrainian sausage.

DJs play a mixture of 1980s disco and funk, as food stalls sell their creations: Jamaican jerk chicken, Mexican tortillas and Ukrainian sausage

Brightening the concrete space are locals in all kinds of New Age, trendy clothes. Men roll up jeans to the top of their sock line, coloured trousers are the norm and haircuts have to come straight out of the ‘don’t try this at home’ category.

The next village along has an upmarket feel. Judging by the shops, Stoke Newington seems to have the highest concentration of vegans in world history. Each grocery store is organic only, with the most expensive constructed from wooden crates and smelling like a tropical island. Coconut water looks to have displaced Coca Cola as the area’s leading soft drink, bread costs £4 a loaf, and even the free samples can’t tempt me inside.

The famous Bricklayer’s Arms in Shoreditch, a typical East End pub.

Further north, Angel’s postcode is EC1. For stubborn East Londoners, this is an acceptable borderline and an area which can be visited. It’s still east, except it’s tarnished with the C, the central part of the UK capital.

Down narrow streets, second-hand shops peddle vintage junk: World War II memorabilia, 19th- century pocket watches, rusted earrings and hideous oil paintings.

Everything can be found at a car boot sale, except it’s on sale here so it’s given a tenfold markup.

But you’re paying for the atmosphere, the charm of a village market mixed with a funky, forward-thinking clientele.

Modern inventions have found a place on alley corners, like two frozen yoghurt bars or one of those dodgy foot spas where fish nibble at your dead skin.

But traditional England lives on all over the suburb. Shakespeare’s Head, Hobgoblin, The Earl of Essex: no, not a guestlist for the latest East London underground club night, but the names of 19th-century pubs. From the outside, there couldn’t be anything more quintessentially English.

The old, painted sign is 100 years ahead of computer-generated logos; pub food and coats of arms are printed on large front windows and a hobo stumbles out of the doors.

Each pub individualises itself with its interior. A table and chairs are nailed to the ceiling, menus promise pots of alcoholic tea and everyone competes to expose the most wooden beams and brickwork.

It’s old, but there’s something irrevocably new that makes me think each different pub is like a piece of designer clothing. To be admired and tried once, but not for regular wearing.

Way out east, Walthamstow has undergone a different transformation. Manze Pie and Mash shop has been in the same family since 1927 without ever changing the menu or interior. Jars of pickled onions stand on a marble counter, wooden benches provide a homely feel and white-tiled walls reflect low-hung light bulbs.

“Walthamstow has always been affordable, so it’s always been changing,” says the owner.

“At one time it was Jewish area, then an Asian area, more recently an Eastern European area and in the last two years it’s where all the young professionals are moving to.”

Her pies are good, succulent mince, wrapped in tender pastry, accompanied by chili vinegar and liquor. Not the alcoholic kind, but the colloquial name given to sloppy parsley sauce.

Hoxton, Shoreditch, Hackney... each East London suburb has its own identity, each on a different stage of the coolness barometer

Hoxton, Shoreditch, Hackney... each East London suburb has its own identity, each on a different stage of the coolness barometer.

Initially, a run-down neighbourhood attracts artists. The artists make the area cool, so the trendies move in and push up the prices.

Unable to afford it, the original residents move out to a cheaper, neglected area and the cycle repeats itself. If you lived around here, you would never be bored; there would always be another up- and-coming high street to explore.

Graffiti offers a message about life in East London.

But as a tourist, you need a focal point, a must-see that tempts you out of central London and gives you a glimpse of the east. Brick Lane is that hook, the attraction that plays itself out on the street beneath decaying railway bridges.

Warehouses have been converted into markets, selling all those things you could never imagine on the high street: wooden sunglasses, real fur coats, Japanese octopus street food, and jewellery made from bizarre materials.

While it’s famous for authentic curries, Brick Lane serves up everything from tofu cakes to Burmese stir-fries and Surinese samba. I find food from six different continents, but nothing that could be called English. Buskers perform for watching hundreds; like a beat boxer making every inconceivable sound with his mouth, and a guitarist wailing like a resonantly challenged Bryan Adams.

Brick Lane is synonymous with the 21st-century East London. No longer a clichéd portrait of working class cockney life, this side of London has embraced a cross-fertilisation of cultures and ideas, and come up with something oozing raw charm.

Sure, I couldn’t reel off a list of places to visit. But that’s part of the experience for locals and tourists alike – visiting an area and exploring the assortment of ideas. Because while central London features highly on everyone’s holiday memories, the sneaky corner you find in East London exists only in yours.