Casa Fofò

Chef and founder Adolfo de Cecco got his start at Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy, Australia and the UK, including at Chris and Jeff Galvin’s restaurant Galvin & Windows on Park Lane. Before setting up Casa Fofó, his first solo restaurant, he headed up the kitchen at Pidgin in Hackney, with a similar set-menu concept.

From the shop-front-style exterior to the décor inside, the venue is East London chic through and through, with just 16 covers in the compact dining room upstairs and a table in the basement available for private dining. Fine-dining touches make themselves known in the cooking, but the atmosphere is more neighbourhood bistro than white tablecloth.

While there’s the occasional influence from De Cecco’s native Italy, the menu here is global in its approach, with Basque, Japanese and Scandinavian influences. Like its neighbours Angelina on Dalston Lane and Perilla on Newington Green, Casa Fofó serves a miniature tasting menu representing great value at just over £40 for seven courses or so. A wine pairing at £32 means you can try a genuinely ambitious gastronomic experience for well under £100 a head, which isn’t common even in East London.