‘My heroes have become my peers’: Isaac McHale on a decade of The Clove Club
Having cut his teeth in prestigious kitchens and as one third of the popular Young Turks, Isaac McHale opened The Clove Club in 2013. Today, it's an acclaimed, two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the heart of London’s fine dining scene.
‘My heroes have become my peers’: Isaac McHale on a decade of The Clove Club
Having cut his teeth in prestigious kitchens and as one third of the popular Young Turks, Isaac McHale opened The Clove Club in 2013. Today, it's an acclaimed, two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the heart of London’s fine dining scene.
However quickly it may feel it’s gone, ten years is a long time. It’s a particularly long time in the world of restaurants, where the future is never certain and there are always new obstacles on the horizon. And in a city with as much choice as London, those which pass the milestone do so having naturally earned a certain level of respect; after all, they must be doing something right. One of the latest restaurants to join that club is Isaac McHale’s The Clove Club, which started life as Shoreditch's new kid on the block in 2013 and, over the last decade, has evolved into an established name in fine dining, with two Michelin Stars and regular spots in lists of the best restaurants in the world to its name.
By the time Isaac (with partners Daniel Willis and Johnny Smith) opened The Clove Club, he’d sharpened his skills in some of the world’s best kitchens. His CV includes stages at Noma and De Wulf, as well as stints at Tom Aikens’ eponymous restaurant on Elystan Street and Brett Graham's The Ledbury, where he stayed for six years and became its development chef. But his most recent role had been one third of The Young Turks collective, alongside James Lowe (now of Lyle's fame) and Ben Greeno, who later left to run Momofuku in Sydney. The chefs popped up across London, including at the Clove Club (a venue in Dalston which inspired their name), Frank’s Cafe in Peckham and The Ten Bells at Spitalfields, where they ran their last service. It fell two days before the World 50 Best Restaurant Awards in 2012 and, knowing the world's most celebrated chefs would be hopping on flights to the capital anyway (the ceremony was held in London's Guildhall), they invited as many as they could to share in the collective's last outing. 'The ticket board read like a fantasy football of chef guests; lots of guys who you would recognise with one name,' Isaac says, listing the likes of Magnus Nilsson, René Redzepi, Enrique Olvera, David Kinch, David Chang and many more. 'We didn’t have a restaurant yet but we had so many Michelin stars in there,' he smiles. 'It was the last day we ever did.’
Going solo inevitably comes with a certain amount of trepidation, but Isaac went into The Clove Club’s opening confident. He was, he says, clear about what he wanted to achieve; two or three Michelin Stars and a spot in the top ten restaurants in the world (it placed twenty-sixth in 2016, the highest new entry for a UK restaurant and the highest place full stop in the UK to date). Once initial teething problems were smoothed out, Isaac's focus moved solely to crystallising the restaurant’s identity. ‘It would have been the easiest thing to take a couple of ideas inspired by The Ledbury and start from there, but I would have been copying someone else,’ he says. ‘It’s ten times harder to take something in a different direction and make it your own. Until you cook your own food you don’t really have your own style, because you’ve been a worker bee. Being a development chef means you bring ideas to the table, not that your style of food or plating is going to come onto the menu.’
There were, of course, lessons learned along the way. Early bar and lunch menu concepts didn’t suit The Clove Club’s ethos, Isaac discovered, failing to appeal to locals and confusing guests who’d travelled to try its refined evening tasting menu. But the restaurant quickly found its footing and began to grow; its front of house team swelled and sommeliers now have a 660-bin wine list to choose from. Its reputation as a trendy new name matured into that of an established, confident fine dining restaurant, spurred on by its Michelin Stars, the first of which arrived in 2014 and the second in 2022. And though today it has well and truly hit its stride, Isaac says nothing is set in stone. ‘When you do have your own style, it changes and changes and changes, and that’s fine,’ he says. ‘Just like musicians evolve. So you don’t ever really have a finished style.’
Today, the seasonal tasting menu journeys around the British Isles, and is dotted with inspiration from Isaac’s travels and Glaswegian upbringing. Previous menus have included its refined take on a chicken pakora, the dish which first prompted a young Isaac to learn how to cook (their version involved buttermilk fried chicken and pine salt). And when I ask about dishes which most clearly define the restaurant, Isaac points to raw Orkney scallop, with hazelnut, clementine and Perigord truffle, which has been – seasons permitting – on the menu for years, as well as a particularly time-consuming (the team spends hours carefully deboning and peeling skin off the fish) sardine sashimi, served on a potato crisp, nigiri-style, with a whiskey broth. ‘They both get the biggest reactions,’ he nods. ‘What’s most important to me is having wow moments; when you eat something and you are stopped by how delicious it is, whether that's because the texture is amazing or it’s a flavour you’ve never tried before. When people stop and look up at each other, that’s really great.’
Isaac has two Michelin Stars under his belt, and hopes to one day bring a third to Shoreditch. ‘I would like to get three stars and I think we are worth it,’ he nods. ‘There are some things we could do with refining and things we could change in the kitchen to achieve that, but it would be brilliant.’ Putting awards to one side, one of Isaac's biggest measures of success is the approval of his peers; The Clove Club has hosted some of the world's biggest culinary names and can often be spotted in lists of chefs' favourite restaurants (Hélène Darroze has said it’s her special occasion go-to). ‘To have the people who were my heroes when I was growing up reading cookbooks in 1985 now coming to my restaurant is incredible,’ he says. ‘It validates what we are doing. People who were my heroes have become my peers.’
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