The Clove Club: Signature dishes worth the praise

Creative cuisine from extraordinary culinary talent
Design classics: a selection of dishes at McHale’s new restaurant in Clerkenwell
Fay Maschler4 December 2017

From a supper club in a modest flat to Shoreditch Town Hall and a placing this year at No 26 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, chef Isaac McHale and his partners front-of-house, Johnny Smith and Daniel Willis, have made an extraordinary culinary trajectory. Tasting menus pre-paid as if for a front-row seat at the opera are one way to go, but I prefer lunch Tuesday to Friday when dishes are offered à la carte. (As a mealtime I tend to like lunch best anyway, especially long lunch). The open kitchen and pared back scholastic dining room look most appealing when light floods through long windows. Dishes that are almost fixtures like buttermilk fried chicken & pine salt; meats cured in-house; raw Orkney scallop with hazelnut, clementine and truffle; game in season; Amalfi lemonade & Kampot pepper ice cream are on offer — as, please note, they might be on the à la carte bar menu. Genial interaction between staff, including chefs, and customers can be another lovable quality here.

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