Auguste, London E8: ‘Some fleeting moments of greatness’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

As is the peril with most small plates restaurants, this meal is more a collection of loose ideas than a coherent dinner Auguste, a brand spanking new Italian restaurant in Hackney, east London, is named, loosely, after a clown. The Edward Hopper painting Soir Bleu hangs on the wall, depicting a tragic sort in a whiteface mask sitting forlornly in a cafe surrounded by hipsters. The clown’s light veneer of calm, it seems, masks his bare tolerance of both his life and his fellow customers. Hopp...

By Grace Dent