'There's a no-choice menu. You either like it or lump it. There are few cheffy indulgences, hardly any blowsy carbs. But it's some of the loveliest food I've eaten in ages'
Confession: I was avoiding the Clove Club. "Why?" you might ask. After all, this is a restaurant from a trio of chaps (chef Isaac McHale and his front-of-house cohorts Daniel Willis and Johnny Smith) who have for years been running ecstatically received foodie events in parks, or abandoned Canary Wharf office blocks, or upstairs rooms of historical pubs.
The answer is, I didn't fancy it. I've eaten at the Canary Wharf and upstairs room gigs. I didn't like the look of some of the dishes endured by early reviewers – a big old leek, split open and rogered with smoked mussels, gave me the particular groo. And the spartan room in the old Shoreditch Town Hall wasn't gladdening my comfort-loving heart.
Then a hotshot foodie pal dragged me along for lunch at the homemade charcuterie-draped bar and I was silenced. Silenced by the gorgeousness of a dish that's a McHale signature, buttermilk fried chicken: nuggets fit for a deity on a nest of pine twigs, the outsides crisp, the insides supple, with a fleeting fragrance from pine salt – not in an Airwick way, more a whiff of astringent woodiness. Speechless at rosy lamb with rösti on top, less proletarian potato cake and more dadaist doodle. "You need to go back for dinner," the pal said as my pupils dilated with every mouthful.
So I do. This time, we're in the dining room, high-ceilinged, long-windowed and clattery, a space of almost Presbyterian plainness. The only colour comes from the azure-tiled kitchen, which isn't just open, it's positively splayed. From here, apron-clad staff – chefs and servers – dive about ferrying dishes: baskets of McHale's nutty, intense sourdough, or cocktails laced with homemade cordials and aromatics. I've sniped about chefs waiting tables in the past, but when the kitchen is virtually part of the room, and the chef doesn't appear from nowhere like a rabbit out of a hat, I'll make an exception.
There's a no-choice menu, a gentle £47 for eight courses. You either like it or lump it. There are few cheffy indulgences (unless you count putting your own-made petit four "teacakes" in carefully reconstructed Tunnock's wrappers), hardly any blowsy carbs. But it's some of the loveliest food I've eaten in ages.
McHale has a way with a vegetable. Asparagus comes with a dollop of gochujang (Korean fermented chilli paste), mayo and ground black sesame, a feisty trio. What's billed as a salad, a beautiful, painterly dish, delivers bursts of intense pleasure: perfectly slow-poached pheasant's egg, snowy-white almonds, crisp, peppery radishes with their leaves, chive flowers, tendrils of creamy, home-cured lardo, the sweetest, greenest peas… Oh, so much more. Underneath is fresh ricotta with a perfectly judged wink of truffle oil; on top, a snowstorm of fresh truffle, flakes and folds of it – utmost luxury.
I haven't room to drone on about the elderflower-vinegared mackerel or the anchovied lamb, not even the little smoked neck collops that are almost the star of the meal. My main quibble with this style of cooking – a bit Redzepi, a bit Aizpitarte, a bit Henderson– usually comes at pudding stage: I've waded through many an avocado or artichoke atrocity in the name of modernity. Here the technique is out there – strawberries and cream starring different textures of the fruit and a cloud-light sheep's milk; almost toffeed prune ice-cream with a sorbet made from the kernels – but it's stuff you actually want to eat.
There will always be reactionary types who'll hate the Clove Club, its tablecloth-free lack of schmooze, the "tyranny" of the no-choice menu. Their loss. I wouldn't have ordered "smoked wild Irish char, sour cream & rye" if I'd seen it on a menu, but it's a joy, its crispbread wafer-thin and almost buttery, the fish fondant-soft, clean, sweet and subtly smoky. Sometimes it's nice to be led by the nose. I'm glad I ditched my small-minded, leek-fuelled preconceptions and went.
• The Clove Club Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London EC1, 020-7729 6496. Open Mon-Sat, noon-2.30pm, 6-9.30pm (11pm bar menu). Lunch, from £25 a head for three courses; nine-course set dinner, £47 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 9/10
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