Chic little Italian restaurants are all the rage in London right now. Turbo Trullos such as Dalla, Tiella and Osteria Vibrato, with their silky cacio e pepes, heavy duty negronis, and the vague promise of seeing Charli xcx chuffing on a Vogue out front.
Auguste, though equally elegant, isn’t that kind of Italian. For starters, there’s barely any pasta on the menu. Instead, this refined east-London bistro leans into the hearty mountain food of Abruzzo, a hilltop utopia to the east of Rome known for sheep farms, robust reds and mysterious medieval towns.
There are mystical wild boar-stuffed morel mushrooms
This is the first real restaurant from one of Time Out’s favourite nomadic chefs, Mike Bagnall (who is somehow simultaneously still running his Elm pop-up at Peckham’s Montpellier pub) and general manager Dylan Walters, formerly of Bambi, but you’d never know it was a debut resto from the slickness of the operation. The dynamic duo have taken over a space previously home to Papi and made it their own, popping up a couple of big, colourful canvases, white cafe curtains and wooden school chairs. It feels a little like Paris, and a lot like Hackney.
The menu is perused over an icy cold vesper martini (surely the cocktail of the summer?), and it turns out that rosti with blue cheese and marjoram is every bit as epic as it ought to be. Only a few dishes are what you might consider ‘light’. There’s cured sea bream with a sparky putanesca salsa, or heroically fresh asparagus with peas and wild garlic, but most are rich and hearty triumphs that show us indulgence is nothing to fear. An antidote to the insidious City Boy salad bar trend, there are mystical wild boar-stuffed morel mushrooms topped with truffle (ideal for your next troll boy dinner), and alluring chicken saltimbocca in a heady jus. The one pasta dish on the menu, a caramelised onion and soft cheese cappelletti, comes in a lamb brodo that’s strong enough to win the British powerlifting competition. It’s really rather outrageous - especially when you consider how deeply reasonable the prices are here. No dish is over £18, increasingly rare for this swathe of east London.
But Auguste’s finest dishes might also be their simplest; skinny, flame-grilled skewers known as arrosticini. Salt-marsh lamb and suffolk wagyu are fabulously juicy and intoxicatingly smoky, while a rose veal liver-and-onion version is appropriately earthy and good enough to impress a liver-phobic like me. There are various dips on the side, including a creamy bagna cauda, but they’re almost better when enjoyed naked and as they come.
If you aren’t afraid of flavour, Auguste truly needs to be your next east London booking.
The vibe Elegant but earthy dining in an intoxicating London Fields space.
The food Hearty, rich and meaty dishes from the hilly middle bit of Italy.
The drink Wines from, of course, Abruzzo, as well as £5 Camparino apertivo, marintis and negronis.
Time Out tip Order the skewers, you maniacs.
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