Jimi Famurewa reviews Yuki Bar: If only the cooking could match this wine bar’s seductive premise

At first glance, Yuki Bar feels like it could be the answer to multiple wailed prayers. If you have long wondered why London’s splashiest, Japanese-inspired restaurants tend towards monastic seriousness and the sort of ruinous per-head prices that could comfortably buy a 65in telly, then here is your salvation: a tiny, Hackney-based opening from master sommelier Yukiyasu Kaneko, where the vibe is loose-limbed, the outlay is modest, and the cuisine is comfortingly homestyle.

And, if you are as bored as I am of the homogeneousness of a small plates scene that is just one “love letter to Paris” after another, then it offers a kind of deliverance. Here is the modern trope of the natural wine bar through a thrilling new cultural lens; here are luscious Juran reds, sansho-dusted crisps and an atmospheric sweet spot between familiarity and surprise.

Or at least that’s what I hoped. It is with an air of nagging frustration that I have to admit I wasn’t wholly convinced by Yuki Bar’s current form. Some of the sharing dishes deliver both fizzing liveliness and a rib-squeezing hug of warmth; its railway arch space radiates cool. But it doesn’t seem to be sure whether it wants to be an expansive restaurant or merely a place for high-impact drinking snacks. And the result, despite that enlivening Japanese accent, is a recognisable muddle of disjointed, almost-but-not-quite moments.

This did not seem like it was going to be the case early on. Yuki Bar is a low-slung, soft-lit affair with meticulously displayed bottles lining the windows, disco-inflected J-pop, and the bulk of the 20-covers arrayed around the horseshoe counter that turns the central kitchen into a gleaming stage set. Kaneko handed me a tranquilliser dart of a Negroni; the room (filled with Moscot-framed couples talking about their Planque memberships) crackled and whirred to the occasional rumble of passing trains. And I struggled, while picking at those moreish sansho crisps, to think of a time when the pleasure of a great, hidden bar had been so effectively distilled and subtly reframed.

Sesame mayo eggs took the cultural scrambling theme and ran with it. Essentially a Japanese riff on oeufs mayonnaise, it brought two soft-boiled eggs, thickly cloaked in a nutty, snow-white emulsion and faintly dotted with chilli oil, but underdeveloped in both flavour and form. The same couldn’t be said of beef tataki: rosy sheafs of obliging, raw rump steak beside an effective activity centre of dips and intensifiers (sesame seeds, soy sauce, hot mustard). Nor a lively, deeply savoury tangle of spiced and vinegared celery, slow-braised in a style known as kinpara. But then came a tinned fish dish, a mound of tuna belly beside cabbage salad, that frankly, could only have been more redolent of a Whiskas pouch if there were a cat yowling at my ankles.

Kaneko has had a fascinating, peripatetic career, taking in everything from winemaking in Oregon to stints as sommelier at Noma and P. Franco. His expertise can be felt at Yuki Bar in the thoughtful, bespoke recommendations — I especially enjoyed a sprightly glass of P’tit Nouveau 2022 from French producer Vincent Wallard — that are an adjunct to the lengthy list of rare bottles. Yet this venture clearly marks his shift from supporting act to main character. And I had the sense, even with the better dishes (like a fragrant chicken tsukune hotpot, roiling with creamy gobbets of tofu, greens and mushrooms in a dashi-spiked broth) that there was a thrown-together quality; an appreciable imbalance of effort and reward.

There is no pudding so we finished with grilled onigiri: a burnished puck of rice cake that had interest and head-turning attractiveness but, ultimately, also wanted for some other central, animating essence. It was a final edible metaphor for a place that doesn’t yet offer a rounded experience to match its seductive staging. Maybe it is best to appreciate Yuki Bar for what it can do rather than what it can’t.

And maybe, like certain vintages, this is one that will make more sense if it is given time to develop.

426 Reading Lane, E8 1DS. Meal for two plus drinks about £110. Open Wednesday to Friday from 5pm-11pm, Saturday from 3pm-11pm and Sunday from 3pm-10pm; @yukibar.london