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Lyle's, restaurant review: 'After the cornucopia of the lunch menu ...
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Dinner is a £39 set meal of five courses, brusquely described ('Peas and Ticklemore', 'Monkfish Cheeks and Liver').
It's the brainchild of James Lowe and John Ogier, head chef and business partner at St John Bread and Wine, and is backed by the Sethi family, who own the wonderful Anglo-Indian restaurants Trishna in Baker Street and Gymkhana off Piccadilly.
Lyle's is in the Tea Building, that unlovely warehouse on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road, where you can find members-only Shoreditch House and its groovy offspring, Pizza East.
James Lowe himself served the Peas and Ticklemore with a flourish: shards of pasteurised goat's cheese overlaid with raw peas and "pea flowers from Canning Town" – a new experience of locally-sourced produce.
If you want to try edgy London cooking, if you want a no-choice dinner in Shoreditch, if you're a fan of fish heads, fish liver, cheese, fennel and a strong whiff of pretentiousness, then head for Lyle's.
Lyle's London Restaurant Review
Lyle's review – minimalist Shoreditch restaurant is exquisite despite ...
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Paring back everything to their essentials is, depending on your point of view, either the ideal way to show off something’s true nature or a stark, monotonous and characterless white hole of ultimate blandness.
Lyle’s is hardly the first restaurant to embrace minimalism, but it’s still nonetheless striking how much it pervades nearly everything that this Shoreditch restaurant presents to the customer.
The best part had to be the chewy, salty skin which was neatly enhanced by the umami of the anchovy puree.
Creamy, sweet, bitter and umami – this deceptively sumptuous dish had it all.
The point of minimalism in restaurants is to dial back almost everything so that the focus rests firmly on the food.
Fay Maschler reviews Lyle's | London Evening Standard
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James Lowe, the chef who has just opened Lyle’s in Shoreditch, was once part of The Young Turks collective, which admirably celebrated indigenous ingredients and small producers.
Another Young Turk was Isaac McHale, who now cooks at The Clove Club, also in Shoreditch, in the Town Hall as a matter of fact.
Although I have encountered manager and Lowe’s business partner John Ogier at St John Bread and Wine — at the time when Lowe was chef there —and at Gymkhana, owned by Lyle’s backers the Sethi family, we maintain grave indifference.
Just as I prefer eating à la carte at The Clove Club, I would next visit to Lyle’s at lunchtime in order to pick and choose on the menu, which evolves and changes day by day, and gambol through the interesting wine list marked up with restraint, where quite a lot is available by glass and carafe.
Fay Maschler's latest restaurant reviews Fay Maschler's latest restaurant reviews 1/11 Percy Founders, W1 ★★ 2/11 Shikumen, E1 ★★★★ Fay Maschler says the lunchtime dim sum was in a way the most impressive dish at this rather stylish restaurant attached to the Dorsett Hotel Read Fay's review of Shikumen 3/11 The Culpeper Kitchen, E1 ★★★★ 4/11 Bo Drake, W1 ★★★ 5/11 Blixen, E1 ★★★ Blixen aims to satisfy all, says Fay Maschler, from the morning coffee drinker to the late-night bar settlers Read Fay's review of Blixen 6/11 Chai Wu at Harrods, SW1 ★★ 7/11 The Tommy Tucker, SW6 ★★★ 8/11 Portland, W1 ★★★ Fay Maschler can't wait to go back to Kitty Fisher's, the new wood-fired project from Young British Foodie Chef of the Year 2014 Tomos Parry and former Pitt Cue Co sous-chef Chris Leach Read Fay's review of Portland 9/11 Kitty Fisher's, W1 ★★★★ Fay Maschler can't wait to go back to Kitty Fisher's, the new wood-fired project from Young British Foodie Chef of the Year 2014 Tomos Parry and former Pitt Cue Co sous-chef Chris Leach Read Fay's review of Kitty Fisher's 10/11 Som Saa, E8 ★★★★ Andy Oliver has devised dishes inspired by northern and north-eastern Thailand that shock and awe, says Fay Maschler Read Fay's review of Som Saa 11/11 Lyle's, E1 Not a fan of set price tasting menus, Fay Maschler vows to next visit Lyle's, the new Shoreditch restaurant from James Lowe, at lunchtime so she can pick and choose and gambol through the wine list Read Fay's review of Lyle's
Lyle's, London E1, restaurant review - Telegraph
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(A further mini-gloss: in the cutting-edge areas of London, food and particularly cocktails are frequently “dirty”; filth is the new frivolity.)
• London's best new restaurant and bar openings Through a vast and cobbled atrium – for we are in the old Liptons tea warehouse – we trolled.
I don’t really have to, because you know what it’s going to be: poured concrete floor, white wall tiles, faux-industrial metal pendant lamps, plain wood tables and chairs, an open stainless steel kitchen from which there throbs the boom-boom of might-be music solely for the benefit of the chefs… and a vast overhead panoply of exposed aluminium ducting and flues – something that Gerry Anderson might have pressed into service for Thunderbirds, after Dr No had grown tired of it.
My guest was having lambs’ tongues, gherkin and yogurt, and I thought I could go for the smoked eel, radishes and onion.
My pretty mean portion of eel was rather fine, as was a spoonful of broth and a silky onion purée.
Lyle's, London - restaurant review | Life and style | The Guardian
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'This white elegance is so much like St John, I don't know why they didn't just cut to the chase and call it St John the Baby' It's no secret that I haven't a lot of time for the World's 50 Most Expensive Restaurants Patronised By Point-Scoring Namedroppers (it may not actually be called that), but I did applaud one thing: its celebration of Fergus Henderson.
When I first encountered the original purveyors of pared-back at St John Bread and Wine (whose kitchen Lyle's co-owner and head chef James Lowe ran for some years), straight off the boat from the provinces, I laughed like a drain at Londoners happy to shell out nearly a fiver for a bowl of peas in a pod.
Its white elegance is so much like St John I don't know why Lowe and front-of-house partner John Ogier didn't cut to the chase and call it St John the Baby.
The food, too, is very referential – from calling weeny cubes of fudgy, fat-studded black pudding "blood cake", to the appearance of gull's eggs.
Thank God the stays come fully unbuckled with puddings – an ebullient mess of vanilla-spiked, custardy cream with sour-sweet rhubarb and silky sorbet – and bewitching sticky, burnt butter cakelets, better even than St John's madeleines.