A sort-of-Japanese restaurant, from the team behind P Franco and Bright, that seems guaranteed to spawn copycats very soon
The restaurant Legs has closed and been replaced by another called Peg. Anyone of a certain vintage possibly now has Rolf Harris’s Jake the Peg stumbling around their mind, brandishing his extra limb and wearing a raincoat. If you don’t, I’m unsure where to start. The past was a funny old place.
That said, Peg in Hackney is very much all about the future, and that’s quite bizarre, too. Peg is a sort-of-Japanese restaurant. Not Japanese in any way to which the British may be accustomed, however: you can forget sushi, udon or okonomiyaki, though Peg certainly grills meats and delicate servings of offal, and presents them in a yakitori manner titivated with shichimi togarashi, yuzu kosho or finely grated horseradish. Dainty small plates, each served with an oomph of flavour. Peg serves agedashi tofu and slightly stinky amazake ice-cream made out of fermented sake leftovers, which is at first awful, then compelling and then life-changingly delicious, although at the same time rather unsettling. It’s green, for crying out loud, like something scraped from Oscar the Grouch’s home. But, by God, I want it again. The same goes for Peg’s entirely delicious Ine Mankai sake, which is sweet, smoky, pale pink and perilously gluggable.
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