Yuki Bar
Yukiyasu Kaneko sold wine on the floor at Noma and at P Franco, went to Oregon to learn how winemakers actually make it, and then took twenty seats under a railway arch off Reading Lane for the first room of his own (Hot Dinners, Harden's).
Why go
For the bottles, and for the man who bought them. Kaneko opened here the weekend of 10 February 2024 after Tokyo, Copenhagen, Hackney and Los Angeles, and he works the bar himself, so the way you order is to ask him what is open.
The claim any natural wine bar makes about its list is worth exactly nothing until somebody independent tastes it. Jamie Goode did, in August 2024, and he scores out of 100 for a living. A Jean-Yves Péron Champ Levat 2021 from Savoie, Mondeuse at 9.5 percent alcohol, got 94, and a La Perdida O Pando 2020 from Valdeorras, Godello fermented in clay with no added sulfites, got 93. That is the evidence, and it is why this room reads as a buying job rather than a look (wineanorak).
The food is small plates with a Japanese lean, built to be eaten standing next to a glass, and it changes daily with what British growers have that week (Hot Dinners). Twenty covers, walk-in, no reservations.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the chilled beef rump tataki with your first glass, and the chicken and spinach dumplings later, since those are the two plates Jake Missing singled out. Then stop ordering food and let Kaneko pour.
- Avoid: treating this as dinner. Missing was blunt that beyond those two plates the kitchen does not hold your attention, and the room seats about twenty on a low wraparound bar, so a group of six is a bad idea.
What locals & experts say
- Jake Missing, The Infatuation, scored 7.9:
Pretensions aside, this is a gorgeous place to have a glass or four. The knee-high, wraparound bar gives the feel of a tight-knit izakaya and its hodge-podge menu of Japanese-leaning small plates is more suitable for drinking snacks than a full-on dinner.
His critical line, on the rest of the menu:Other dishes just pass by like a Burberry trench sweeping past the door.
1 - Jamie Goode, wineanorak, after tasting three bottles here:
The focus is clearly on the wines, and this isn't just another lookalike selection of the same old standards, it's a carefully chosen range, and because of the rarity of many of the bottles, even someone who follows the natty scene quite closely (that is, me) will be grateful of some guidance.
He scored what he drank 90, 93 and 94.2 - Catherine Hanly, Hot Dinners, reporting the opening in February 2024:
Kaneko was formerly the sommelier at Noma and also P Franco before working with former Koya chef Junya Yamasaki at Yess Aquatic in LA. This will be his first solo project.
That is coverage of an opening rather than her verdict on the bar.3 - No chef vote. All 622 lines of the London industry-vote file were searched on 1 August 2026 and no working cook or operator in the corpus has named this bar. The rung rests on one critic and one wine specialist.
Good to know
- Where: 426 Reading Lane E8 1DS, in a railway arch between Hackney Central and London Fields.
- Size: just over twenty inside. Both February 2024 reports agree on the number.
- Booking: walk-in only. Both reports also had it open Wednesday to Sunday, which is now two and a half years old and has not been re-checked.
- Website: none. The bar publishes on Instagram at @yukibar.london and nowhere else, so
website:is left blank. - Hygiene: the FSA register carries no record for this address, which is missing data rather than a finding.
- Price: The Infatuation files it in its top price band. Rare bottles cost what rare bottles cost.
Verdict
should-visit — Yuki Bar is worth the detour if you drink wine seriously, and not if you want dinner. Yukiyasu Kaneko poured at Noma and at P Franco, studied winemaking in Oregon, and helped open Junya Yamasaki's Yess in Los Angeles before taking twenty seats under an arch off Reading Lane for his first solo room. Jamie Goode, who tastes for a living and has written the book on how wine is made, sat at that bar and scored a Savoie Mondeuse 94 and a clay-fermented Godello 93, and said the rarity of the bottles is the reason you want the guidance. That guidance is Kaneko himself, standing behind the bar telling you what is open. The food is snacks, honestly, and Jake Missing scored the place 7.9 while writing that most of the plates pass by without landing. So the plate is not the reason, the glass is, and by the primacy rule that is a real craft case rather than a room with a nice light. It stops short of must-visit because one specialist's afternoon and one critic's score is the entire independent record, and no London chef has named it.