The Clove Club
Shoreditch, London
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There's a fascinating sense of disjunction between the formal stepped and pillared entrance to what was the former Shoreditch Town Hall and the unbuttoned ambience within, where bare wood floors and an open kitchen faced in blue tiles are very much in the contemporary mode. Isaac McHale's tasting menus (long or short) combine the popular touch with forthright innovative confidence – witness the explosive bursts of flavour in an opener of barbecued aubergine topped with white crabmeat, its dressings of brown crab bisque and dill oil further deepened with notes of ginger and cinnamon. A thoroughgoing effort to be resourceful in the use of ingredients means that prawn heads turn up alongside their tartare, while the bones of sardines go into a broth boosted à l'ancienne with cream and whisky to go with sardine sashimi, the latter delicately glazed in soy and chrysanthemum, but also powered up with mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Sea bass grilled over hazel wood comes to the table on its still-smoking skillet for a bit of performance art, while a main course of Middle White pork, ordinary enough in itself, embraces a mid-course supplementary serving of pulled meat and crackling in a taco. Temperature variations are wittily explored in a granita of grilled habanero chilli with ewe's milk yoghurt and plum sorbet. Dessert could be apricot-kernel mousse topped with a sugary tuile dusted with blitzed popcorn and puffed amaranth, underneath it all a slim disc of Victoria sponge, soaked in apricot syrup, bringing a twang of nostalgia to the finale. Low-intervention sips, skin-contact trendies and biodynamics make their voguish appearances on what is otherwise a fairly strait-laced wine list. Cocktails are absolutely worth a punt.
