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.
On a Wednesday night just three weeks after it opened, we snuck into Auguste at 6pm and the place was entirely mobbed. It was as if the old Papi crowd had simply carried on making pilgrimage here, like worker ants not quite realising that their queen’s chamber had moved. That night, the arrosticini came in three varieties: salt marsh lamb, Suffolk wagyu and rose veal liver, all with a choice of four dipping sauces including green goddess, aïoli, chilli and bagna cauda – a silky Italian garlic and anchovy number. We put in our skewer order first, but they didn’t turn up until just before pudding – this is, after all, a hip small plates restaurant, so there are no rules. Uniforms on staff? No. £5 Campari cocktails? Absolutely. Pristine linen but eating meat off sticks? Damned right.
The short, frequently changing menu leans heavily on the central Italian region of Abruzzo, so expect the likes of coppa stagionata, stracciatella with yellow datterini tomatoes and wild boar-stuffed morels with Italian summer truffle. We began with a round of bite-size potato rösti topped with an unctuous blue cheese cream that had been piped on in a 1970s dinner party style. Delicious, although the rösti themselves were too soft to bear the weight of their topping; they needed to be drier and crisper.
Next up, some top-quality cured sea bream served with what was billed as puttanesca salsa. Puttanesca, to my mind, means cobbled together or, well, something slightly ruder, but Auguste’s interpretation of it was a rather allium-heavy dressing of onion and red pepper that was, perhaps, a touch crude for the lovely fish. A bowl of cappelletti in a clear broth felt very authentic: the pasta work exemplary, the broth a tad salty, but a great dish overall. A plate of fresh asparagus served with just-podded peas and a wild garlic cream was very pleasant indeed. But the star of the show was a chicken saltimbocca wrapped in prosciutto and sage, fried and finished with a rich, chickeny jus.
As is the peril with most small plates restaurants, however, our meal was more a collection of loose ideas than a coherent dinner. Those salt marsh lamb arrosticini were the final hurrah of our savoury courses, and were a little too pink; they came alongside skewers of tender rose veal liver with onion. Meat on sticks with dippy sauce. My earth remained unshook.
Dessert, meanwhile, was limited to just two options: a vanilla semifreddo with gariguette strawberries or a rudimentary tart billed on the menu as a mascarpone, spiced rum and coffee caramel number, but in reality some very thick pastry filled with an unset, rum-heavy cream festooned in cocoa powder. Rustic, certainly. Edible, yes.
Auguste shows some fleeting moments of greatness, but there’s plenty of room for improvement among the serious bits and a little clowning around. Luckily for Auguste, though, it comes armed with a loyal, ardent fan base who may or may not have realised there’s a new circus in town.
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Auguste 373 Mentmore Terrace, London E8 (no phone). Open dinner Weds-Sat 5.30-10.30pm (11pm Fri & Sat), lunch Sat 12.30-3.30pm. From about £50 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service.