Cycene

Cycene occupies the top of Blue Mountain School, the concept building on Chance Street where Shoreditch meets Bethnal Green. Named after the Old English word for kitchen, it opened in 2022 in the room that once held Mãos and holds a Michelin star. The evening runs as a sequence rather than a sitting: a first course and an aperitif at the ground-floor bar, a snack by the open kitchen, then a single seating of sixteen in the first-floor dining room.

That dining room is intimate and low-lit, oak-panelled, with candles on white linen and a lone charcoal portrait on the wall, closer to a private house than a restaurant. The kitchen sends out a nine-course menu drawn from seasonal British produce, seafood and game, and a sommelier works a cellar of low-intervention wines rotated from an offsite store. Hand-thrown clay beakers and tableware by the British potter Steve Harrison carry much of the food.

For a private dinner the Hearth Room, an installation by the American artist Tyler Hays of BDDW, seats up to six around a live-edge walnut table set against a tiled mural and closed off from the main room by floor-to-ceiling drapes. The full sixteen-cover restaurant can also be taken exclusively for an evening built around one table. It suits a milestone dinner or a small, considered celebration rather than a party.