Ellory: top-quality neighbourhood restaurant

Overall Rate: 8.5/10

Price: dishes £8-21

Price we paid: £50

Go there for: no-fuss top quality food, hipster atmosphere

1 Michelin Star

Location: London Fields, Hackney

Ellory is a small neighbourhood restaurant in London Fields, Hackney. Definitely not the kind of location where you would expect to find quality food, in the midst of the hundreds of burger joints and Aussie-avocado-salmon-style brunch spots. Even less you would expect to find a Michelin-starred restaurant. But here it is, with its bare-wood tables and industrial finishings, Ellory is a typical east London hipster restaurant. But serving amazing food.

The restaurant has a modern European-inspired daily-changing menu, with no distinctions between starters and mains. All dishes are thought to be shared. We visited on Sunday at lunch, when they have an additional special Sunday dish which is the equivalent of a pub Sunday roast. Unfortunately we visited on their LAST day of service (March 5th 2018): they are relocating their operation to Shoreditch under the name Leroy. Opening will be on March 20th, and the concept will be very similar to Ellory, with the same team behind the kitchen.

We ordered five courses, including the Sunday special, plus two desserts. The first course was mussels with sea leek and fennel pollen. This was an outstanding dish, probably the best mussels dish I have ever had. The mussels were fresh, very big, served with a sweet and salty umami broth, and amazing sprinkles of fennel on top. Simple, yet delicious. A great start.

Second dish was a steak tartare with mustard creme cru. Quality of the meat was very high, knife-cut in large chunks, mixed with capers and other flavours and herbs. The mustard creme was also superb, as was the crunchy olive bread on the side. Great quality of ingredients and superb execution.

The third dish was the best of the day. A slice of toasted bread with a topping of salt cod and monk beard. This was my first ever encounter with salt cod, which I would put very close in texture and flavour to baccalá mantecato, a typical Venetian dish. The texture of the cod was creamy and tasted delicately salty, while the monk beard was fresh and extremely crunchy. I have to admit I am a fan of monk beard, but I am usually not a fan of cod in all its shapes and forms - nevertheless this was an outstanding dish, I will remember it for a long time.

Then came the Sunday special: beef shin lasagne. Together came the fifth dish, chicory with blood orange and ricotta. Lasagne were incredible, admittedly the only lasagne I’ve tried that come close to the ones my mom makes (close, but not quite at the same level). The ragu was a sort of pulled meat sauce, soft and packed with flavour. The pasta was homemade and with perfect texture and taste. The least surprising dish was the chicory, which the waiter recommended we ordered. Orange was a bit too bitter and covered the taste of the ricotta, which to be fair was not the best ricotta ever. Overall a pleasant dish, but not at the level of the previous ones.

Desserts were also amazing. A pear sorbet with honey and chamomile had a pure taste of pear, with chunks of crunchy pear to give texture, and chamomile to add a kick. Impressive, and very seasonal. Second dessert was chocolate mousse with burnt honey ice cream: chocolate mousse was warm and very thick, and the combination with the ice cream in the middle was just perfect.

Overall, Ellory is the kind of restaurant that we like. No fuss, no decorations, just amazing food and outstanding, simple (and mostly seasonal) ingredients. I like the fact that they focus on simple preparations aiming to make the most out of the flavours of the ingredients. The bill was also very reasonable, £50 per head with a beer to drink. Service was friendly and capable, even though a bit too essential sometimes (we ate the 5 savoury courses in the same dish, maybe a new dish between mussels and lasagne would have helped). I really hope that the new Leroy keeps up the level with Ellory, we’ll definitely check it out soon.