Clove Club

Clove Club Review at-a-glance

Awards: 1 Michelin star, #27 2020 Worlds 50 Best List

+Solid kitchen technique highlighting British products in a very approachable form

+Relaxed FOH fits Clove Club’s Shoreditch setting and passes their passion for the food on to the diner

Rating: 91/100

Verdict: Perhaps my rating of 91.5 underrates how much I enjoyed my meal at Clove Club. The food was earnest, enjoyable and commendably focused on native British products. The kitchen did these native products proud, treating them admirably and letting their quality do the talking. FOH is attentive but relaxed, exuding real love of the food they are serving - something that is often lost in the rigid formality of fancier Michelin restaurants. The lunch menu even offered terrific value, not showing any concessions to the lower price point beyond the first course being a salad. Based on what I ate during my visit to Clove Club I would eagerly return for dinner and recommend a visit if you are in London.

Price I Paid: £65 for 4 course lunch

Value: 17/20

Clove Club Background

Clove Club is located in Shoreditch, an upcoming hipstery part of London. The vibe of the restaurant is certainly befitting of its location - wooden tables with no tablecloth in sight, relaxed servers, and plenty of natural light. The restaurant offers two tasting menus at dinner priced at £145 or £95 depending on length. We visited for lunch when they offered tasting menus ranging from 4-6 courses. We went with the 4-course menu priced at £65 and the kitchen kindly sent out two extra courses making it a more comprehensive take on the food at Clove Club.

Clove Club’s chef is Issac Mchale who previously spent five years at The Ledbury which only has two Michelin stars but is regarded by many as the best restaurant in the UK (prior to its closure due to the COVID pandemic). After his time at the Ledbury, Mchale joined James Lowe and Ben Greeno to form the Young Turks, hosting a series of pop-up dinners around London before setting down semi-permanent roots above the Ten Bells pub in Spitalfields. After his cooking with the Young Turks, Mchale opened up Clove Club in the old Shoreditch town hall in 2013, crowdfunding the restaurant opening in lieu of taking out a bank loan. Success quickly followed, the Clove Club earning a Michelin star only one year after opening and consistently ranks high on the Worlds 50 Best list. Mchale’s cooking is heavily focused on sourcing the best British ingredients and creating clean, unfussy plates to show them off - almost like a practical take on new nordic for Britain.

What I ate at Clove Club

Before getting into the main meal, Clove Club kicked things off with a few snacks including cornish crab tarts with brown butter hollandaise and their signature buttermilk fried chicken served with pine salt ( and a few smaller bites which I forgot to take notes on and photograph). The bites portended the excellent meal to come with it being nearly impossible to pick which one is better. Fried chicken is not something you typically expect at the start of a Michelin star meal but the Clove Club should think about starting up a chicken stand that sells only this - first you get the satisfying crunch from the thin polenta batter and then the nice moist meat of the chicken. Perfection.

First course was a bit of a snoozer, consisting of a Salad of biodynamic vegetables with turnip milk and sesame. The vegetables were of high quality but it is hard to get excited about a plate of raw vegetables - I think it would have been a more successful dish had they done some variations on how the vegetables were cooked rather than leaving them raw. Perhaps this course was a concession to the lower price of the lunch menu.

While we only ordered the shorter four-course menu the kitchen kindly sent out two extra courses, first of which is this very nicely presented hay-smoked trout with almond milk, roasted almond, roe and trout skin chips. Trout is not the most luxurious of fishes but the kitchen handled it very nicely, the smoking nice and gentle and the meat of the fish velvety smooth, pairing well with the nice crunch from the roasted almonds.

The next surprise course was a tad smaller but equally as good - sardine sashimi with Worcestershire sauce & chrysanthemum. Sardine is a humble fish but the kitchen treated it well here, offsetting its oiliness with a strong Worcestershire sauce. If you are craving a traditional nigiri this won’t fit the bill but it was a welcome interlude in our lunch.

The next proper course was steamed lemon sole with green asparagus, truffle, and bacon. Personally, I loved the presentation of the dish, the sole cleverly cut in a similar shape to the asparagus. The most impressive part was the truffle vinaigrette which packed a ton of black truffle flavor, a pleasant surprise given it did not feature any fresh grated black truffle (and we were eating the cheaper lunch menu). Several months later I had a similar sauce with turbot at a much more expensive lunch at Le Cinq in Paris and I can’t say the three-star version was appreciably better than the one at Clove Club. A fantastic dish from the kitchen at Clove Club and my favorite of the night.

Main course featured two options and my wife and I picked different options so we could enjoy both. First up was a pork jowl, saddleback potato, and Cox’s apple in stages of decay. The pork was nice and tender and, as you can tell from the picture, the kitchen expertly crisped up the skin to provide a textural contrast. Apple, a classic accompaniment for pork, was served in a few different ways including jelly and powder. The only real complaint on this dish was the flavors felt more like fall than spring (we visited in April), very different than the rest of the very seasonal meal.

Even better than the pork was the other main course, chicken from Lincolnshire, jersey royals, wild garlic, and white asparagus. This dish really connected with the ethos of Clove Club with its many spring ingredients and perhaps the most British of products, a jersey royal. Just like with the pork, the kitchen treated the protein well, keeping the meat nice and moist while serving it with a flavorful jus and a bright wild garlic puree. The jersey royal was kept simple, letting the potato shine.

Dessert was loquat sorbet, loquat kernel cream, and puffed amaranth. If you have no idea what loquat is (like me before eating this dessert) it is a citrus-like fruit that blends sweetness, tartness, and notes of citrus all in one package. It made for a very refreshing dessert but the best part of the dish was its texture - the kernels and puffed amaranth adding plenty of pleasing crunches to contrast the smooth sorbet.