The Clove Club
Housed inside the Shoreditch Town Hall in East London, The Clove Club is exceptionally good at keeping its guests on their toes — and wanting more. Serving an ambitious five-course menu and an extended menu that offers unassuming British ingredients with flair, and featuring a front bar room, The Clove Club’s biggest asset is that it never does the same thing twice. Instead, it does a range of different dishes incredibly well. Part of the allure of Isaac McHale, Daniel Willis, and Johnny Smith’s restaurant is that its five-course dinner menu or extended nine-course menu features new items on its double no-choice menus. A sample menu shows the range that McHale commands in the kitchen and offers prospective guests a peek at what’s waiting for them inside the restaurant, but of course, it divulges no secrets.
Though some might argue that The Clove Club’s pomp and circumstance routine is a bit too self-indulgent, there’s no getting over the fact that what the Club does, it does incredibly well. As Timeout noted in its review of the restaurant in 2013, “Everything about it screams “look at me”: the location, in the former Shoreditch Town Hall, the austerity of the décor, the open kitchen, and the other diners, many of them scenesters,” and it works. You don’t just have to see it to believe it — you’ve got to eat there, too.
The Clove Club is open Monday through Saturday from 12 until 2:30 p.m. and for dinner from 6 to 9:30 p.m. A three-course lunch menu is also served during the day.
