About Isaac McHale

Isaac McHale has taken The Clove Club from it’s modest East London supper club origins to a Michelin star and 26th in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants rankings in just over five years. It’s an astonishing achievement, but like all overnight successes it’s one based on hard work, drive and ambition. The Scottish chef began his career working in restaurants in Glasgow and went on to learn from the very best, spending six years in the kitchen at two Michelin-starred The Ledbury with Brett Graham and interning around the world at Marque in Sydney, In De Wulf in Belgium and Noma in Copenhagen as well as with Tom Aikens in London.

In 2010, McHale made waves alongside Ben Greeno and James Lowe in creating the Young Turks collective, where the three chefs did events and cooked dinners in London and across the world. At the same time his friends began a supper club in their house, which they called the Clove Club. The would go on to use this name when they opened a restaurant together.

‘McHale can be found in the kitchen, creating up-to-the-second, modern dishes such as raw Orkney scallop, clementine, brown butter and Perigord truffle’

McHale found a permanent base for The Clove Club in 2013 in the grand surroundings of Shoreditch Town Hall, a 19th century Grade II listed building with high-coved ceilings and Doric columns. With business partners Willis and Smith working front of house, McHale can be found in the modern restaurant’s open kitchen that’s simply decorated with cerulean-coloured ceramic tiles, creating up-to-the-second, modern dishes such as raw Orkney scallop, clementine, brown butter and Perigord truffle, or a Chestnut and Oyster broth with wild Scottish seaweeds.

With a strong international following (around 60% of the clients are international) , and moving rapidly up the worlds 50 best restaurant list, getting into the Clove Club at night can be hard, but the room is arguably even better when enjoyed at lunchtime, where the huge windows fill the room with light and it can be easier to get a reservation at short notice.

With a second restaurant called Luca due to open in London in November, which promises to serve 'Seasonal British Ingredients through an Italian lens', and a string of appearances at high profile events around the world, McHale is a busy man indeed, but his focus remains The Clove Club, and continuing to be in the kitchen there day on day.