Brat at Climpson’s Arch, 374 Helmsley Place, Hackney, London E8 3SB (bratrestaurant.com). Small plates £6.50-£16, Big plates £22-£30, Sharing dishes £55-£135, Desserts £5-£7, Wine From £25 a bottle It felt like the punchline to a dark British joke. On the day we were finally allowed to gather around an outside restaurant table, we awoke to find it was snowing. That TS Eliot knew a thing or two; April really can be the cruellest month. Still, where dogged fun is concerned, we are a stubborn if ludicrous breed. Just ask anyone who has ever sat on a British beach in a howling gale, with bare, vein-mottled thighs like corned beef, pretending it’s summer. We regard it as character forming. Anyhow, I had a plan to mitigate the chill. The outdoor rules demand that whatever form of cover is in place, at least 50% of the sides must be open to the elements. The solution for these early, tentative steps was to go somewhere that barely had to adapt to comply with the rules. Hence, I booked into Brat at Climpson’s Arch in London’s Hackney, where wood-fired grills flick blood-red sparks into the night sky. The covered space here is a large but temporary shed, a rigid-framed marquee that looks like it wants to be a proper building when it grows up. Roll up the sides. Take the doors off the hinges. Job done. In 2012, before making his name as head chef at Kitty Fishers, Tomos Parry ran a pop-up at Climpson’s. In 2018 he opened his own restaurant in a wood-panelled space in Shoreditch, and won gongs aplenty. It’s called Brat, an old English word for turbot which, slow grilled over smouldering embers until the vinegar-spritzed skin somehow both crisps and softens, became the menu’s star turn. Last summer, with various restrictions in place, Parry decided to return to Climpson’s Arch. It was meant to be a temporary residency, but is now looking permanent. So here we are on our first night out of captivity, trying not to be feral. We are endlessly pleased with ourselves simply for having booked a table. We are overcome with gratitude for the ministrations of these cheery waiters in their loose denim uniforms. Fairy lights are strung overhead. There are wobbly tables and a scribbled blackboard menu full of dishes that read like sweet promises. There are patio heaters, some of which even work. The air smells of smoke-grilled seafood; a deep and encouraging seashore funk wafts around, here by the north London train lines. I loved the bricks-and-mortar version of Brat. I swooned over seemingly effortless cooking of a sort that takes deep wells of patience and skill. I liked the modernist cafeteria vibe. But I love this space a little more. It has a rackety, freestyle vibe. And oh, how the food sings. At the heart of the menu are big, showy wood-grilled sharing items, at big showy prices. Those prices will make the comments section below this piece online froth and bubble like a fart-filled bath. If you’re going to look, take popcorn. But if you want a whole turbot, you shouldn’t expect it to be a cheap. Get the large one for four people and it will cost you £135. The beef rib for four is £120, or two of you can dismantle a vast wood-grilled Cornish crab for £55. These prices include sides: grilled hispi cabbage and smoked potatoes, awash with butter and bursting from their skins. Tonight, there are many takers for all this. We see the crabs and turbots parade past us like headliners for Sunday Night at the Palladium. We go another way, heading into the smaller plates, priced at between £6.50 and £16. After we’ve placed our order, our lovely waiter says, “That’s all quite rich.” We ask if there’s anything that isn’t rich. He nods. “Fair point.” Our first dish is lightness itself: brilliant green spears of asparagus cooked so they still have bite, with a thick puddle of fresh, creamy cheese for dredging. Despite this morning’s snow, it is proof that spring is here. We have a plate spread with both rust-coloured velvet crabs, broken into body and leg, and large, shiny mussels, opened over wood smoke, alongside discs of rough-textured chorizo. Prepare to get your hands sticky. Indulge in suckage and slurpage. Use the napkins. We are advised to order a Bible-thick slab of their grilled and buttered white bread for sauce-mopping purposes, for all these good things have given the best of themselves to the plate. It is a very good steer. There’s also a fearsomely hot cast-iron skillet with a soupy mess of white beans laid with a spicy morcilla-style blood sausage and split langoustines grilled until the tails have just emerged from translucent. Dribbles of a strident salsa verde bring it all together. It is deft, sensitive cooking in the service of seriously classy ingredients. A mutton chop is enthusiastically fire-grilled but still the pink of a Provençal rosé within. Buried beneath a sweet, taut-skinned tomato salad is a boisterous sausage made from the offal. We also have a shatteringly crisp fritto misto of hake, squid and courgettes, with fronds of deep-fried green herbs. It is all sigh- and swoon-worthy. Around us happy chatter rises and so does the smoke from the open kitchen; I know that the next morning the coat I have worn against the bitter cold will smell of the night before. I am warm in so many ways. Desserts are engineered for a restaurant with a lot to do on service: a caramel cream or baked cheesecake with rhubarb, both of which can be made earlier in the day and dished up as needed. That cheesecake is the ideal sweet-soft foil for the pink, glossy sour-sweet rhubarb. The wine list has lots of natural twist and turns. Just tell your waiter you don’t want anything that smells like it’s been filtered through the arse end of a pig and they’ll find you something crisp and friendly – in our case a bright white from Crete. You thought lockdown might have changed me? Nah. I still don’t want my glass filled with a liquid that suggests the winemaker hates me. A restaurant is never the sum of its dishes, however good they are and these are very good indeed. It is a mood and a sensibility; it’s the babble of voices, the clink of a glass and the chime of cutlery on porcelain. It is a sense of wellbeing and it can’t be forced. Brat at Climpson’s Arch has it. I leave with the glow of a man who knows he’s chosen well. It was the right place to begin this restaurant reviewing business once more. News bites Like many people I have spent the past year cooking in culinary traditions I hadn’t previously investigated at home before. The biggest challenge, especially with east Asian dishes, is obtaining ingredients. Happily, there has been an expansion of the online shopping options covering much of Britain. The newest and perhaps most niche is C&R Marketplace which offers a small range of Malaysian ingredients including instant rendang sauces, laksa pastes and even durian cakes (cnr-deli.com). Korean ingredients are now served by the online arm of Osyeo, the UK’s largest Korean retailer. There you can find over 1,100 products from whole cabbage kimchi and gochujang through to bulgogi marinades and seaweed snacks. You can even get a K-Pop CD to entertain you while you cook (hmart.co.uk). Finally, the magnificent SeeWoo Chinese supermarket in London’s Chinatown has an online shop offering a massive range of products including frozen dim sum, chilli oils, pastes and instant noodles (seewoouk.com). And finally, another new opening. The five-bedroom Glebe guest house in Colyton, East Devon has been taken over by Hugo Guest, son of the original founders, and his partner Olive. From 17 May it will have a small restaurant offering both ‘simple suppers’ – cassoulets and pies and so on – throughout the week, plus a four-course £48 Italian-inflected menu from Thursday to Sunday. Ingredients will come from close by including their own smallholding. Expect house salamis, wild garlic tortellini in brodo, smoked eel tartare and a rhubarb and custard tart (glebehousedevon.co.uk).