Review: P Franco, Hackney

Although it is no longer there and I’ve no idea what chef Clive Davies is doing these days, I will always remember the Green Cafe in Ludlow. Some chefs produce deceptively simple food but have such a deft touch at balancing flavours and seasoning that eating it always transports you to a better place. The Green Cafe is one. So is the Parker’s Arms up in Bowland. So is Baker and Graze in Cheltenham. There are surely others.

P Franco is another, lurking in a really uninspiring parade of tatty shops on a busy road at the edge of Hackney. It’s a wine bar that does food and is clearly a beloved local institution; folks perched out on the pavement enjoying a glass of wine along with a pizza from the place next door. We got a slightly more comfy window seat inside and ordered one of everything (pretty much). It’s a very short menu and, I’ll be honest, when I glanced down it I thought “okay… not super exciting… we’ll see.” Needn’t have worried! Refer to my first paragraph.

They’re assertive about their wine at P Franco. They won’t give you a wine list, they’ll engage you in a conversation about what kind of wine you’re after and then bring back one or two bottles for you to try a sip of before pouring you a glass. Relax into this, I implore you, they won’t let you down. Well… as long as you’re okay with natural wine.

Anyway. Cucumber with tahini dip. Ridiculously simply but wonderfully nutty with lightly salted chunks of cuke to scoop it up with. Next up, tartare wrapped in shizo and mustard leaf. The tartate was beautiful, chopped to the right smoothness and full-flavoured, and the powerful hit of mustard and greenery went great. Plus I love shizo leaf. Duck liver parfait on toast with pickled plum. Almost – so close – nearly as good as the Green Cafe’s duck liver parfait (this is the highest praise in the world) and the sturdy slices of bright orange plum added a great freshness.

Pause for the star dish. Borlotti beans and squid in a herbal smoked bone marrow broth, watercress on top. This broth was an absolute earthy-smoky extinction level event. Everything changed. Boom. I would drink lakes of this stuff. Lakes.

In the spirit of ordering everything, we got the cheese and the dessert (only one of each on this menu). The cheese was a hefty chunk of Brillat-Savarin that had been kept to perfection, and paired beautifully with the little dish of sweetly deep tomato jam. The pudding was “frozen yogurt with bramble”. See? Sounds… meh. Froyo. But the brambles had loads of chopped up shizo leaf that had picked up the black colour and added a great herbal note, and they’d served the yogurt on a little bed of meringue crushed to powder; the slightly fizzy sweetness elevated the smooth frozen yogurt into a top palate cleansing pud.

As you can tell, I was taken by P Franco. Especially as I think this great display of simple-but-perfect cooking was about £20 per person before drinks. The wines are fairly priced too. Hackney, I envy you.