P Franco, Lower Clapton Road, E5

The first post-gentrification closures are starting to roll in. Maeve's Kitchen up by Clapton Pond closed it's doors over Christmas, and The Plough on Homerton High Street - one of my favourite bars in the area (but clearly not frequented enough) - shut its doors at the end of January. I suspect a few more may decide to shut up shop over the coming months, if trade doesn't quite pick up.

Despite the climate, Lower Clapton Road's perpetually steamed up wine shop and bar P Franco has recently started doing food, and it's heaving - even on a cold Sunday evening. There's good reason: a man called William Gleave, a Tasmanian export, who ran an acclaimed restaurant in Hobart. He took up residence at P Franco in November, cooking a short menu from a tiny kitchen attached to the big communal table in the middle of the shop.

I had seen the menus pop up on my feeds for months and seen very alluring snippets and snaps on Twitter, but a succession of belt-tightening months had me dialling down my eating out for a while.

The wait is worth it. My discerning friend and I are naming it the best meal we've had in ages mouthfulls into the first dish that's brought out: raw chopped beef (soz, 'crudo'), with crispy shards of dried seaweed (like nori), crumbed anchovy, rocket and mayo-like emulsion, and powdered seaweed. It's cool, creamy, firm, crispy, leafy - a gorgeous mixture of temperatures and textures, borrowing from Japanese and Italian flavours and ingredients.

Next up is a "risotto" without the rice - it's all toasty seeds, pine nuts, orzo pasta, and two types of wheat in a thick, luscious nettle sauce, topped with crispy kale and tiny shards of broccoli, topped with parmesan. There's an egg yolk buried in the risotto, and we're encouraged to pierce it and blend it into the sauce. This is a stunning looker - all rich, emerald green - but it's a proper taster too. It's the most extravagant vegetarian dish I've had without any of the usual buttery, creamy cliches of extravagance. 

A chicken broth with cuttlefish comes out next. The cuttlefish is cut so thinly it's almost like rice noodles, ghostly floating in the rich, fully flavoured broth, topped with just-blanched squares of greens, and then generous glugs of rich, fruity Le Coste olive oil. It's simple, fresh, under-stated.

We climax and conclude with the pasta dish. There's always a pasta dish on the menu, and I've recently spied a food blogger call this some of the best pasta in London. Uhuh, yup. The pasta is rough cut, wide sheets - somewhere between papperdele and lasagne, with a good bite to it. The sauce is a simple tomato sauce, topped with basil and generous parmesan, and the quality of the ingredients just sing. My highlight is a creamy curd cheese, like that in the middle of treasured burata. It's utterly luscious, and nicely chilly against the warm, fruity, acidity of the tomato sauce. It's made by Gleave every day, and I'm already making plans to make my own...if only I could find some buffalo milk.

There's a great selection of wine, as you'd expect from a wine shop. The pricing is simple - just add £10 to any bottle on the shelves, which are chiefly from small producers, often natural/organic/biodynamic, and most supplied by esteemed suppliers Tutto. They have a couple of red and a couple of white open for pouring by the glass, which suits us as a way to try a few interesting glasses between us over the course of the evening. 

We get the impression that most people here are pretty serious about their wine, many in a professional context - perhaps working in other East London restaurants. It feels the slightest bit sceney, and sometimes it's not clear who's working and who's a guest. But there's a welcome for everyone, and the food prices are exceptional value for the quality - ranging from £8 - £10. While there isn't a wine list, the wines are very clearly priced on the shelf, with bottle prices from £9 (before the £10 corkage), which compares favourably with house wines at other local restaurants.

By the end of the meal we're sure it's the best we've had in ages. So simple, so concise, so on the mark. I'm already formulating plans to take various friends here for a relaxed evening of wine and inventive dishes brought out in gently paced succession. Don't delay, this is the real deal.

Mission E2, Paradise Row, Bethnal Green

Wine bars are back with a vengeance. The much derided symbol of 90s Conran-infused yuppiedom have risen again. Clapton has seen the Danish-inspired Verden and wine shop-bar Pie Franco open in the last 6 months, hot on the heels of Sager and Wilde on Hackney Road. Across town, wine focused bars are opening, some with a focus on cheese and charcuterie, others with more comprehensive menus.

Mission E2 is the latest, opening a fortnight ago in Bethnal Green by Charlotte and Michael Sager-Wilde. Its focus is on the wine and cuisine of California, its name a nod to the exciting Mission district in San Francisco, which is the new beating heart of creative Californian cooking. It was where I was staying exactly a year ago as I ate my way through the Golden State.

Situated in a railway arch on the blossoming Paradise Row, it's a great mix of London and California. A gigantic palm tree fills the arch, with a deep grey polished concrete floor and huge bi fold doors that open up the whole space to the terrace out front. On this balmy September evening you could have easily believed you were in trendy Los Angeles suburb Echo Park.

There is a reasonably sized wine list of sensibly priced, exclusively Californian wines by the glass and bottle, and a more extensive and expensive menu for the real connoisseur. The main list did us fine, enjoying a glass of Mission Fizz, which looked totally flat but must have been full of invisible bubbles. A Sonoma County Trousseau Gris was light and minerally, and the Nero d'Avola from Mendocino County was so deep and sultry that it tasted of death, in a good way. Prices started at £4.50 a glass for (presumably great) house wines, up to about £10.50 for more interesting choices. With a standard £20 mark up on all bottles, there's a big incentive to push the boat out a bit.

The food menu is impressive, with smaller bites, starters, mains, sharing dishes and desserts. We could have tried everything, but settled on nduja arancini and globe artichoke to start. The arancini were relatively subtle but there was enough nduja to give a bit of fiery warmth. 

The glove artichoke was just perfectly cooked and served with an anchovy buttery emulsion to tip the leaves in. It's such a nice dish for leisurely nibbling through with a good glass of white, and the heart at the end is the ultimate reward for the perseverance.

Choosing mains was particularly hard, with ox cheek lentils and salsa verde, rabbit with giroles and polenta, and a cuttlefish and mussel stew on the menu. In the end we settled on their platter of lamb chops, priced at £38 but could have easily fed three people with the six generous chops. They were incredible. Beating even Tayyabs on taste, if not price. Garlicky, herby, perfectly charred, brilliantly fatty and charred lemons just added to the stickiness.

We shared a dulce de leche cheesecake for dessert, which was nicely pungent and came with chunks of cinder 

toffee.

At £50 a head, it's not cheap, but it felt totally justified for the quality of food and wine. You'd pay about the same in San Francisco, and boy, what a saving on the airfare. There's a brunch menu and plenty more to try on the evening menu. And if it's true to Californian form, the menus will evolve with the season, so plenty of reason to go back and make my way through the wine list. Low key but warm service ensures that you'll have a relaxed, enjoyable time. And I'm just delighted to have a slice of California so close to home.

Verden E5, Clarence Road, Clapton

I've been excited about Verden since I first caught wind of it opening, and I've been excited about writing this blog since I first visited it a few weeks ago. Spoiler alert: Verden blew me away and I hope I persuade you to check it out and be blown away too.

It's hard to believe that just two and a half years ago, none of the pubs in Clapton had gastrofied. Now there are only a couple left that haven't. Back when the Clapton Hart dolled up, this place was boarded up, having been shut down in its previous guise as the Cricketers after intervention by Hackney Council.

Verden is the most 'grown up' of Clapton's new bars. Inspired by the wine bars of Copenhagen, one of the key people behind it is a former Maitre'd at Scotts in Mayfair, and its offering is based around the trinity of exceptional wines, cheeses and charcuterie. This isn't about showing off drinking champagne. These are people who are deadly serious about wines, cheeses and sliced meat and have gone to the bother of finding the best to share with us punters.

The decor matches the grown-upness. No shabby chic nothing here. It's all crisp, clean lines; black, white, grey and some gorgeous wood. Big windows draw in all the light upstairs on a sunny day, and the basement's deep grey walls, low ceilings and pendant lights make for a futuristic, Scandi revision of the speakeasy.

I've been to Verden twice since it opened: for an evening and for brunch. Our evening at Verden was special - making our way through the meat and cheese and wine menus. We were there for almost four hours, drinking and grazing at our own pace, before sharing a couple of main courses and three desserts between the four of us.



One of their most understated achievements is balancing a meticulous and expert sourcing of wines, cheeses and meats without any kind of sniffy pretension or assumption that diners know their way around these worlds (and judgement if they don't). The menus have lots of well priced options on (glasses of wine start at £3.50, as do cheeses and meats), and short descriptions tell you everything you need to know, so you're not ordering in the dark. I've been to bars with a similar premise which are a lot more intimidating - and that's to seasoned diners like me.

There is a short menu of daily dishes available - for when the wine you've drunk hasn't quite been soaked up by the cheese and meat you've nibbled on. Actually, that's unfair - the food is excellent, with delicious salads (we might have had the tomato one twice it was so good), and typically at least a meat, a fish and a vegetarian dish, as well as some desserts.

We had a crispy confit duck leg with perfect lentils and a charred lettuce. It was a classic done well, and the duck generously sized too. My friends shared a weighty green salad with delicious curded cheese.



The desserts were perhaps the most impressive. We loved the savarin brillat cheesecake with apricots - the cheese making the cake so much more pungent and punchy, offset beautifully with the sticky apricots. A brilliant night.bread and butter pudding with rich vanilla ice cream was warming and satisfying.





Back for brunch a fortnight later, the quality was that notch above the standard Hackney brunch (which is already quite high). The bloody mary was great, with a delicious cornichon and caperberry adorning it. Not too boozy that it'll bring last night back to you, but enough to help you ride it out.



The brunch menu builds on the well-sourced meat they stock for their boards, with exceptional morcilla sausages, iberico, bacon and smoked ham. I went for their rendition of the classic ham, egg and chips, which consisted of two massive slices of amazing ham, perfectly fried egg, and the dreamiest, richest roast potatoes you can imagine, glistening with crystals of salt and thick with the good oils they were cooked in.



The iberico hash with salsa was excellent too, as was the morcilla, bacon and egg.





It was nice to see the space in the full light of day, and Ed Wyand's hostelry makes it a very relaxing, welcoming spot to have a leisurely brunch with friends.

Verden is the gift that keeps giving - all the cheese, meat and wine is available to buy from their cold store downstairs, and you get 10% off on presentation of your receipt. I know I'll be back many times over the coming years to stock up on killer cheeses (the 28 month aged comte in particular), and to bring friends to show off what a perfect establishment we are lucky enough to have on our Clapton doorstep.