Family-run Franglish bar is luminous, lovely and animated by playfulness

FORK AND TALK Eline 1C Rosewood Building, Cremer Street, E2 8GX. Meal for two plus drinks about £140. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 6pm-11pm; restauranteline.co.uk

- Jimi Famurewa

IF, LIKE me, you are the proud resident of an underdog, outer-London postcode, then you will be familiar with the anticipation that generally attends a newbuild. Will it, you wonder, be an independent coffee place? A chic wine bar? Or, maybe, an Asian supermarket, slinging unexpectedly terrific takeaway dumplings? The mind whirs; hours are lost to fruitless, investigative Googling.

And then, of course, it actually opens up and inevitably turns out to be a Costa. Or a dessert bar. Or an estate agent's office. And you mutter quiet curses, while also reminding yourself that nothing with much soul or sexiness ever seems to open up in these spaces. They are, generally speaking, monuments to missed opportunity.

But in Hoxton, this familiar pattern has played out differently. Because there, set in a swish residential development, we have Eline, a gorgeous little restaurant and wine shop that has the full package. Which is to say: here is purity of intent, obvious talent, and a neighbourhood spot radiating the sort of characterful warmth, luminous cooking, and loveliness that isn't readily associated with these identikit rooms.