Auguste, London E8: ‘Some fleeting moments of greatness’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants
As is the peril with most small plates restaurants, this meal is more a collection of loose ideas than a coherent dinner
Auguste, a brand spanking new Italian restaurant in Hackney, east London, is named, loosely, after a clown. The Edward Hopper painting Soir Bleu hangs on the wall, depicting a tragic sort in a whiteface mask sitting forlornly in a cafe surrounded by hipsters. The clown’s light veneer of calm, it seems, masks his bare tolerance of both his life and his fellow customers. Hopper painted it in 1914, and now, more than a century later, this same sad clown feels more than a little symbolic of all those who have chosen a life in hospitality at this time. Paint on a smile! Get out there! Make the crowds happy! If only business rates could be paid with a bucketload of glitter …
Auguste’s owners, chef Mike Bagnall and general manager Dylan Walters, have taken over the 32-seater premises formerly known as Papi, which recently upped sticks and moved on to a much larger site at The Golden Tooth in Newington Green. The space has been transformed from its Papi days as an extremely hip, European-influenced, irreverent, small plates, low-intervention wine and hyper-cool spot, to its new incarnation as, well, an extremely hip, Abruzzo-influenced, irreverent, small plates, low-intervention wine and hyper-cool spot. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, you might be thinking, but pas exactement! The room now has white tablecloths and the big draw on Auguste’s menu are its skewers or, to be precise, arrosticini. Think tiny mini kebabs with the meat cut into 1cm cubes, then grilled over something called a furnacella. The live-fire craze among London hospitality’s menfolk shows no signs of abating. Man make fire. Fire good.
المصدر: The Guardian — Food
