If you didn’t get round to visiting Papi in any of its previous incarnations, in the guise of the Hot 4 U pop-up, well, I can’t really blame you. After all, life was making it jolly difficult to eat out at the time, and you were very possibly staring forlornly at an NHS Covid app and wondering if that ping meant another nine full days of baked bean Brevilles, or you had just given up on “the outdoors” altogether.
But it was at that exact point that Hot 4 U was trying to make things happen in east London with a series of temporary engagements in pubs such as the Prince Arthur and the Haggerston in E8, by serving up iced buns with Marmite butter, beef tartare with mulberry umeboshi, and ox tongue with seaweed and tzatziki. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t have gone to Hot 4 U regardless of the pandemic, because it just sounded a bit bloody much. And it really did: they did foie gras-wrapped Mini Magnums, chicken bicep with shichimi and an ever-changing wine list featuring the likes of Fleur Godart’s Male Tears 2020, part of the Cuvées Militantes series of wines taking a stance against sexism, racism and homophobia.
