Hackney’s Game-Changing Wine Bar Announces New Chef

P. Franco, 2017’s Eater restaurant of the year, wine shop, and original adopter of low intervention liquor in east London, has announced its next guest chef: Túbo Logier will take over from Anna Tobias on Thursday 11 April.

“Our time with Anna Tobias has gone so fast and its going to be sad to see the end of her residency at P. Franco but we are also excited to announce that on the 11th of April Túbo Logier will start his residency,” the owners told Eater today.

Logier arrives from Luca, the Brit-Italian pasta-and-more restaurant by the Clove Club team in Clerkenwell. Before that he cooked at the latter; at both, the Vietnam-born 23-year-old has worked as sous chef.

Ola Smit/Eater London

Before moving to London for a job at the Clove Club, Logier, who grew up in Belgium, trained at In de Wulf (the now-closed seminal Belgian new-wave fine-dining restaurant) and Chambre Separee in West Flanders — under the direction of Kobe Desramaults. Between leaving Belgium and arriving in London, Logier he travelled and cooked through Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Logier describes his food thus:

I think it would be hard to identify my cooking as one style or cuisine, I’m using food more to explore my Asian roots and tying it together with being brought up with European food in a fun, interesting and creative way, using all the techniques I’ve been influenced by in the kitchens I’ve worked.

Details regarding specific dishes are scarce, but it’s safe to assume P. Franco will return to the more fine-dining-edged styles of the chefs who preceded Tobias. Tobias has consistently — and thrillingly — eschewed pretty plates, instead preferring to promote and reclaim her own unique brand of “beige food.” Inadvertently, for the last six-months, the plates at P. Franco have been decidedly anti-Instagram.

Logier has given three examples of what guests can expect from his residency: “Smoked aubergine, oyster, and beef fat,” “Boudin and squid sauce,” and “Potato, crab, and beer.”

P. Franco [Official Photo]

This coming Sunday, 31 March, P. Franco will host the so-called “Handover” wherein the current resident chef (Anna Tobias) collaborates on a menu with the guest chef-elect. “It’s a fun day to celebrate Anna’s time at P. Franco but also for her to show Túbo how to work the small kitchen space,” the owners said.

Tobias replaced chef George Tomlin last September. Before Tomlin, P. Franco and its (now three, not two) induction hobs was the blank canvas for chefs: Pepe Belvedere, Giuseppe Lacorazza, Tim Spedding, and Will Gleave. Belvedere and Gleave together now run the kitchen at P. Franco’s sister restaurant, Bright, which opened close to London Fields last May. Gleave, together with Phil Bracey, co-owner and wine aficionado across the group, opened the skewer restaurant Peg, on Morning Lane in Hackney, in February.

More soon from Logier at P. Franco.