The restaurant Legs has closed and been replaced by another called Peg.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.
That tofu is exquisite, by the way, some of the best I’ve ever tasted. Thick cubes topped with an irresistible nori mush, crisp on the surface, smooth and yielding below, almost like sweet potato. It came with feathery tempura oyster mushrooms and a bowl of fragrant dashi. I accept that “exquisite tofu” will be an oxymoron to some; my brother refuses to touch the stuff, so convinced is he that it’s some sort of culinary aberration grown in chef’s armpits. But this is why I would never take him to Peg. It is only for deeply cool people such as myself, who don’t balk at the fact that Peg’s menu is on two boards above the open kitchen counter, a bit like a 1970s greasy spoon. One features only seven items explained in one word: “thigh”, “wing”, “heart”, “liver”, “mackerel”, “meatball”, “shiitake”; the other has approximately six “plates”: for example, cabbage, mizuna and sesame salad or a bowl of mixed fermented and pickled root vegetables. Prices for all of these things are reasonably low, between £4 and £9, which in the capital, at least, is quite rare.
There is, of course, no menu online. Peg’s website is a single holding page, its background coloured in Farrow & Ball Elephant’s Breath, that directs you to its Instagram site, where there is no menu, either, but there is an arty shot of a Studio One ska album featuring Roland Alphonso and Don Drummond. Probably best just to go and let them tell you all about it, because the staff are delightful. They’re that glorious type of food nerd with whom you would happily eat dinner, so let them rhapsodise about their suppliers, Flourish Produce, NamaYasai farm and Kernow Sashimi. Peg does have a phone number, but don’t bother ringing it because they don’t take reservations. I told you the future was brilliant.
Besides, it’s all counter seating, so there are no cosy tables to reserve anyway; in fact, there are no tables full stop. You’re up on high stools, so, as Patsy Stone said, “The world’s your gynaecologist.” These counters, Peg says, are made out of thousands of compressed recycled yoghurt pots. No chef these days opens a restaurant without making reference to some pretty deep thoughts about the planet, although in Peg’s case I do believe them.
This is the team behind P Franco and Bright; they are the real deal whom everyone else eventually copies. When you’re sat in Huddersfield in 2021 on an Ikea Råskog bar stool, eating chicken hearts off a bench made out of secondhand Zoom lollypop sticks, blame Phil Bracey, William Gleave and Byron Fini. This orchestrated foolishness, these small plates of Fosse Meadows chicken wings flavoured with notions of sansho and chenpi, or thighs enlivened with a paste of yuzu, chilli and salt, is where it all began.
Peg will not be to everyone’s taste, but it is one of my favourite openings of 2019 so far. It is bold at a time when the restaurant world is being very cagey, and I respect them for it. First, we ignore them. Then we laugh at them. Then they feed us smoked mackerel broth with soft turnip and nori and ice-cream made of rubbish, and then they bloody win.
• Peg 120 Morning Lane, London E9, 020-3441 8765. Open lunch Thu-Sun, noon-3pm (4pm Sun), dinner Wed-Sat, 6-11pm. About £25 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Service 8/10
