There is an idea that limitations give art life, that greatness comes from constraint. “The essence of every picture is the frame,” said G K Chesterton, penning the most famous line on the matter.
So it is: writers need deadlines, stand-ups a short leash and the best plays are not those improvised. Is cheffing art? It takes creativity and attracts heavy drinkers, which seem to be the two main qualifications. But chefs don’t benefit from boundaries as sculptors do. Take Sally Abé. She trained in the military brigades of the Savoy, Claridge’s and the Ledbury, before leaving the Harwood Arms to consult on a five-star hotel. Piles of cash may have drawn her, but there was also a dangled promise of doing what she liked. Trouble is, hotel groups do not work like that. Budgets are tight and supply lines long established: you must work with what they’ve got, colour strictly between the lines. One day, at a pub wedding, Abé welled up in frustration, despairing of it all.
Now, after a year at the fashionable Bull in Charlbury, she finally has her own place in what was once Pidgin. The usual constraints apply — in the end, profit and loss sheets come for us all — but Teal is a restaurant done her way, to her standards. There is no head office to kowtow to; the buck stops with Abé.
She has opted for a British bistro, which in this instance isn’t just a byword for a pub. Abé’s distinctively British food draws from across the past century or so, proving our national cuisine goes beyond Sunday roasts, chippy teas and crap pies constantly at risk of extinction. In a city of rehashes, here is somewhere unmistakable, idiosyncratic, singular. When was the last time you had a penny lick?
Teal is also astonishingly, masterfully good. It is simply decorated — guess what colour the panelled walls are — with Abé’s favourite cookbooks breaking up the pot plants. Marble tables, cute café curtains, room for just 25. The food is doubtlessly meant to be the point, but none of the dishes are overworked ornaments, those fiddly plates that watercress always seems to intrude on. Thank f***. Instead, you’re always gleefully wondering what’s coming next.
Things begin with snacks: order them all. There are both devils and angels on horseback, vying for attention. Devils are sweet prunes filled with rich chicken liver parfait and wrapped in a length of crisp, glistening bacon that gave just the right sting of salt. Angels are oysters in the same bacon and deep fried into utter gluttony. Scotch eggs, usually light in the titillation department, here are beautifully improved not just by the pig’s head in the meat, but by tart, tangy Oxford sauce (mustard, vinegar and pepper), a revival from her Harwood days.
Lockets savoury, slices of pear folded into blistered stilton on toast, offered freshness and funk side by side. It was, though, blown away by the bone marrow baked with snails and garlic and parsley. Might Abé be the only chef cooking bone marrow properly in London? Lately it has been altogether too much like snot on toast. Here it was a yellow flickering into gold, with a nutty, buttery taste. With the snails, the sensation was not dissimilar to being shaken by the lapels and screamed at. “You want flavour?! We got flavour!”
Mains impressed partly for the Goldilocks portions — harder than you’d think — but also for their essence. A glorious, ragtag mess of Cornish mussels out of their shells with sweet Jersey Royals, cauliflower and spikes of romanesco broccoli was a triumph of comfort. Wild garlic was shown off to rare, potent effect with two ruddy-cheeked slices of beef sirloin arriving with luscious short rib and a half an onion as sweet as unexpected flowers. Penny licks after — ice-cream in a grappa glass — called for extraordinary dexterity of the tongue. It might clinch an otherwise unpromising date.
I don’t always understand gendered distinctions in the kitchen, but championing women is a big part of what Abé does, and I recognise these conversations must happen. Sally Abé could be said to be London’s greatest female chef. I’d prefer to say she’s one of London’s greatest chefs. Boundaries don’t help chefs, remember?
52 Wilton Way, E8 1BG. Meal for two about £160; tealbysallyabe.com
