The Clove Club

The Case for Making This Your London Reservation

If you make one booking in London's competitive fine dining tier, The Clove Club is the one that earns its place most convincingly. Not because it is the most formally imposing — it is not — but because it occupies a position that few two-Michelin-star restaurants manage: technically serious without being austere, ingredient-driven without being evangelical about it. It has appeared in the World's 50 Best Restaurants every year since 2016, peaking at number 26 in both 2016 and 2017, and held its two stars through 2024 and 2025. That sustained record across multiple independent ranking systems carries more weight than any single accolade.

Shoreditch as Dining Address

The address matters more than it might seem. Shoreditch Town Hall, on Old Street, is a Victorian civic building that was never designed for fine dining. That tension , between the formal, stepped entrance with its pillared facade and the bare wood floors and blue-tiled open kitchen inside , sets the tone before a dish arrives. London's other four-star-price-range restaurants, including CORE by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill and Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library in Mayfair, operate from spaces that signal their tier through architecture and address. The Clove Club does the opposite: it uses a repurposed civic hall in east London to create an atmosphere that is genuinely less hierarchical, without sacrificing the quality of what arrives at the table.

The neighbourhood context matters for a broader reason too. Shoreditch's emergence as a serious dining address over the past decade reflects a wider shift in where London's ambitious cooking has chosen to locate itself. The concentration of creative restaurants east of the City represents a deliberate counter-movement against the Mayfair and Chelsea strongholds where much of the capital's Michelin infrastructure historically sat. The Clove Club was among the early signatories of that shift, and its sustained performance at international level has helped legitimise the area as a genuine peer of those more established postcodes.

The Kitchen and the Cooking

Isaac McHale's cooking sits within a British fine dining tradition that prizes ingredient provenance while insisting on technique confident enough to transform rather than merely present. The tasting menu format , available in long and short versions , moves through Orkney scallops, Wiltshire trout, Torbay prawns, Herdwick lamb, and Middle White pork, a roll-call of British sourcing that is specific rather than tokenistic. The geographic precision in that list is deliberate: it maps directly to a culinary argument about the depth of the British larder, one that restaurants like The Ledbury and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal have approached from different angles.

What distinguishes the approach here is the willingness to complicate flavour. A barbecued aubergine topped with white crabmeat sits in a dressing of brown crab bisque and dill oil deepened with ginger and cinnamon , combinations that should conflict but resolve. A sardine preparation uses the bones of the fish in a broth built with cream and whisky, served alongside sardine sashimi glazed in soy and chrysanthemum, with mustard and Worcestershire sauce for structural weight. These are not flourishes. They are evidence of a kitchen that treats familiar British ingredients as starting points for flavour architecture rather than as subjects to be preserved in amber. The sea bass arrives grilled over hazel wood, still on its smoking skillet at the table , a theatrical moment, but one grounded in method rather than spectacle.

The resourcefulness extends to the use of secondary cuts and parts: prawn heads appear alongside their tartare; Middle White pork, after its main-course appearance, returns as pulled meat and crackling served in a taco as a mid-course supplement. This kind of nose-to-tail thinking at the fine dining level connects the kitchen to a broader British culinary conversation that runs from gastropub through to the country house dining of L'Enclume in Cartmel and Moor Hall in Aughton.

Snacks before the main menu , including crispy buttermilk chicken and crab dumplings , arrive alongside the house martini, and the transition from arrival drinks to seated courses is paced deliberately. The granita course, built around grilled habanero chilli with ewe's milk yoghurt and plum sorbet, demonstrates the kitchen's interest in temperature and heat as structural elements rather than afterthoughts. Dessert , an apricot-kernel mousse with popcorn-dusted tuile, puffed amaranth, and a disc of Victoria sponge soaked in apricot syrup , lands the menu on something that reads as nostalgia decoded rather than nostalgia indulged.

The Wine Program

The wine list stretches to close to 800 references and has placed consistently at the leading of Star Wine List rankings: number one in both 2023 and 2024, with multiple top-four placements across the same period. A list of that scale can easily become unwieldy, but the curation here is reported to keep each reference purposeful. Low-intervention producers, skin-contact wines, and biodynamic labels sit alongside more conventionally structured selections, giving the list a point of view without narrowing it ideologically. For a restaurant of this profile, the cocktail program also carries weight: the house martini is a specific recommendation, and the broader cocktail offer is considered worth pursuing in its own right rather than as a pre-dinner formality. European creative peers operating at comparable price points , such as Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen and Enrico Bartolini in Milan , tend to weight their programs heavily toward Old World structure; The Clove Club's list is more pluralist.

Where It Sits in the London Two-Star Tier

London's two-Michelin-star bracket at the ££££ price point is not a small group. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay represents the classical French end of that spectrum; CORE by Clare Smyth sits in modern British territory with a more restrained, produce-first sensibility; Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library brings a French luxury framework with strong aesthetic drama. The Clove Club occupies a different position: creative British with a casual-formal ambience and a track record that has held top-50 global placement for nearly a decade. Its 93.5 points on La Liste in 2025 and OAD ranking of 93rd in Europe in the same year confirm that its peer set extends beyond London's own two-star tier to a broader European creative conversation.

For readers comparing options in the British Isles, the relevant frame also includes country properties: Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton, and The Fat Duck in Bray each represent a different version of what serious British cooking can look like. The Clove Club's argument is urban, ingredient-specific, and atmospherically relaxed in a way that distinguishes it from all of them.

Planning Your Visit

The Clove Club is located at Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London EC1V 9LT. For planning beyond dinner, explore our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide. For the broader dining picture, see our full London restaurants guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I eat at The Clove Club?

The tasting menu is the only format, so the question is really whether to take the long or short version. Based on the kitchen's documented approach , ingredient provenance from named British sources, layered flavour construction, and a snack sequence that includes buttermilk chicken and crab dumplings , the longer menu gives the fullest picture of what McHale's two-star cooking is doing. The house martini at the start and the cocktail list throughout are worth treating as part of the meal rather than sideline options. The OAD and World's 50 Best placements both confirm this as cooking that merits time rather than efficiency.

What is the vibe at The Clove Club?

The Clove Club operates at ££££ pricing with two Michelin stars, placing it firmly in London's premium dining tier, yet the atmosphere reads differently from most of its peer set. Bare wood floors, an open kitchen faced in blue tiles, and a Victorian town hall setting that was repurposed rather than purpose-built create a room that feels animated rather than reverential. The Google rating of 4.6 across 1,152 reviews suggests the experience consistently lands for a broad range of diners, not just those seeking formality. The World's 50 Best ranking and La Liste score confirm the cooking is at the level the price implies; the room ensures it does not feel like a test.

Can I bring kids to The Clove Club?

The tasting menu format, ££££ pricing, and multi-course structure make The Clove Club a considered choice for children. There is no publicly available information on a children's menu or specific age policies. As a general principle, restaurants operating long tasting menu formats at this price point require patience from diners across multiple courses, which can be challenging for younger guests. If budget and format flexibility matter, London offers a wide range of alternatives at different price tiers , see our full London restaurants guide for options across the city.