Natural Wine Pioneer’s Little Love Letter to Japanese Dining in Hackney Will Close

Peg, Noble Fine Liquor’s smallest and newest natural wine bar and restaurant, has announced it will close its doors at the end of this week as a result of significant strains on staffing.

The restaurant, overseen by head chef Will Gleave, wrote on Instagram in the afternoon on Thursday, 21 July, that a tricky two years has culminated in the decision for the group to focus efforts on the business’s other venue — P. Franco on Lower Clapton Road, Bright in London Fields, and Noble Fine Liquor on Broadway Market.

“And here we are again… It’s been a tricky past couple of years to say the least. When we were forced to close at the beginning of covid we had no idea what the future had in store for us. We took our time and made sure that our friends @noblefineliquor @pfranco_e5 & @bright_restaurant were back in business before we reopened our doors,” the restaurant wrote. “However we’re seemingly back here again and put simply, the strains on staffing at this current point are such that something has to give.”

The restaurant will close at the end of the week. “We don’t know when / if our doors will open again and for sure it saddens us, but we’re also super proud of all that we’ve achieved,” the post said.

“We definitely want to continue but unfortunately closure is a requirement for us to strengthen what we have elsewhere and really push to realise (sic) the visions that we’ve always had.”

Peg opened on Morning Lane in 2019 as a yakitori drinking venue, serving the natural and low-intervention wines the group had made popular across Hackney in the year since the mid-late 2000s. It reopened after the pandemic with a bit more of a conventional and structured menu to encourage a higher and more sustainable spend-per-head.

More on the future of the venue and the whereabouts of chef Gleave soon.