Ellory

The wine list leaned heavily into Europe, matching the kitchen's ethos of letting provenance do the work. A five-course set menu and a Sunday lunch option kept the offer accessible relative to the star's weight, with pricing that sat in the mid-range for London at that tier. The Hackney location placed it squarely within East London's emerging restaurant corridor during the mid-2010s, when the neighbourhood was producing some of the city's more considered cooking outside the traditional fine-dining postcodes of W1 and SW1. Ellory opened in late 2015 and closed in 2018, giving it a short but critically noted run. The minimalist room drew mixed reactions — some found the noise levels and austerity at odds with the price point — but the kitchen's focus on produce-led simplicity was consistently recognised as the restaurant's defining quality. For a Hackney address to pull a Michelin star within two years of opening marked it as one of the more closely watched openings of that period in East London.