Lyle's
Lyle's review: James Lowe's Shoreditch restaurant is the most precise tasting menu in London. Short, seasonal, deliberate. Go for the first sitting if you can.
Lyle’s has the particular quality of restaurants that know exactly what they are. It is a single room, all white walls and Ercol chairs, on a mezzanine floor in the old Tea Building.
The room
Spare, bright, unadorned. No music. The kitchen is along one wall and you can see everything that goes out.
What to order
The set menu is the only menu. Five courses at dinner, always deliberate, always seasonal, often cleverer than it looks on the page. A plate of smoked and cured fish, a single cooked vegetable course, a braise, cheese, pudding.
The drinks list
Outstanding. The wine pairings are, unusually, worth the extra money.
What you will pay
Menu plus pairings, per person, service: around £175. Without pairings, more like £110.
The verdict
Book a Thursday early sitting. Do not skip the pairings.
Clara Whitfield
Editor and restaurant critic
Clara Whitfield is the editor and lead restaurant critic of Vivi. She has eaten through the London restaurant scene professionally for over a decade, contributing reviews and features to regional and national food publications.
She writes Vivi's weekly restaurant review and the Saturday essay. She prefers early dinners and a table facing the room.
Near this restaurant
Brat
Tomos Parry's wood-fire restaurant on Redchurch Street is the most exciting dinner in East London. It has been, for most...
Rochelle Canteen
Margot Henderson's restaurant inside a converted Victorian bike shed, behind a locked green door off Arnold Circus, is s...
Bar Gemella
A small Italian wine bar on Lexington Street that takes walk-ins until nine. Three marble tables, a short list, and a cl...