In an alley in London’s Chinatown, discerning diners can enter Evelyn’s Table, one of London’s most modest restaurants. That’s where I find myself on St. Patrick’s Day—not exactly an evening usually associated with fine dining. But Evelyn’s Tablelocated in the basement of the Blue Posts pub, it’s a fitting place to celebrate the imminent arrival of spring, even if the bathroom queue is a little longer than usual thanks to the drunken revelers who gather upstairs.
But thankfully, the restaurant, which opened in 2018, has a cocoon effect, isolating its 12 guests from everything but the two-and-a-half-hour tasting menu. The dining experience is the vision Let’s talk about Samthe third chef to helm Evelyn’s Table since its inception. Sam took over from James Goodyear in autumn 2024, but it was the previous team—brothers Luke, Nat and Theo Selby—that earned Evelyn’s Table its Michelin star in 2022. Sam spent four years as head chef at Muse by Tom Aikensand before Worked at Restaurant Story AND Carnation Club. He was ready to embrace an opportunity to showcase his style. Taking over an established restaurant, especially one that already had a Michelin star, was a daunting prospect.
“You always have to believe in your own ability,” he tells the Observer, speaking from Evelyn’s Table a few days after St. Patrick’s Day. “It takes a while for that to feel natural when you come somewhere new. And it’s always evolving. I look at our menus and it’s such a stark contrast to when I started. But sometimes you need that fear to push you.”
Sam has generally stuck to the original menu format at Evelyn’s Table. It’s always been just the tasting menu; The countertop holds a maximum of 12 diners per seat. Currently, the five-course dinner menu costs £135, while the Friday and Saturday four-course lunch menu is £95. But Sam has also made food for himself. He introduced hors d’oeuvres – an eel custard from his first menu is still served today – and developed the bread course. The sourdough is baked daily in-house and comes with three toppings: butter, foam cheese and a cashew nut parfait.
“At first, it was just bread and butter,” Sam recalls. “I was thinking of making another loaf, but it seemed too much. It’s too filling.”
Instead, he chose to make his own crackers and grissini. One of the crackers is shaped like a piece of wild garlic, allowing guests to enjoy all the accompaniments in different ways. The wild garlic-shaped cracker is dusted with dried wild garlic – a favorite ingredient for Sam. He dries and stores the garlic each spring for use throughout the year. He also looks for elderflowers to make sure he’s always around.
“I will make oil from it, vinegar from it, cordials from it,” he says. “I always make enough to last me the whole year. I bring the elderberry vinegar and oil home because there’s just no room in here. It’s on top of my bookshelf.”
The intimacy at Evelyn’s table is part of its charm. The chefs prepare each course before dinner, many of whom become new friends during the meal. It requires a lot of preparation because there are two seatings each night and three seats on Fridays and Saturdays, so the chefs can’t disappear into the back room during service. It has a diner atmosphere, which is enhanced by the location.
“It just creates a beautiful atmosphere,” says Sam. “We take the food seriously, but the service feels more fun. The fact that we’re under a pub feels quite exciting and hidden. There’s a lot of attention to detail, and it’s good food in that sense, but it also has a lively feel. It’s great when people are talking to each other and those walls are broken down.”
This sense of whimsy comes through the clothing. The dishes are beautifully presented and extremely accurate, but not all dishes are pristine. Instead of throwing away plates and bowls when they break or chip, Sam and his chefs use the Japanese art of kintsugi, a practice where broken dishes are repaired with gold, to mend them. When I had dinner, my friend and I would playfully fight over who gets the plate with the most gold lacquer, as if it were some kind of prize.
“Dishes are expensive,” says Sam. “It’s a good way to preserve things. I do it myself sometimes. If it’s Friday or Saturday, a person will deviate from serving lunch and spend the time just doing the dishes. The philosophy behind it is pretty cool, but it’s also very practical.”
Sam brought the technique with him from Muse, where Aikens hired him as head chef for its opening in 2020. Sam, who grew up in Luton and studied civil engineering at school, had previously worked for Aikens at the now-closed restaurant. Tom Aikens early in his career. It was his first experience with good food; he started in the kitchen at the Hampstead pub Taurus and the Lastwhere he learned the value of making things from scratch.
“It was a good learning curve and a good starting point because we basically did everything there,” he says. “We made our own bread, we made our own shrimp, we made our own terrines, our own ice cream, everything. And it was very busy. It was good to have that sense of urgency early on, which is an important trait to have as a chef. I learned how to cook properly.”
During his two years at Bull & Last, Sam quickly rose through the ranks. He describes the job as a “baptism by fire,” but he also absorbed every bit of knowledge he could. He headed to Tom Aikens Restaurant in 2012, which was his baptism of sorts.
“He was very intimidating,” Sam says of Aikens. “I was very young and he definitely saw something in me at the time. He’s one of the best chefs to ever come out of the UK, so I had him on this pedestal. I was able to progress quite quickly there because I got on and I was able to adapt quickly in the service. It took a year for that relationship between us to really happen, and by the time I got to Muse he had become amazing to me.”
Spending time working for other chefs helped Sam define his own cooking style, which incorporates seasonal ingredients with global flavors. He’s inspired by whatever excites him at the time, whether it’s a new technique, a compelling ingredient or a type of cuisine he’s recently tried. Sam’s father is from Malaysia and his interest in Asian spices comes partly from his heritage. But he draws inspiration from all over the world, even places he hasn’t visited yet.
“I definitely have a love for Southeast Asia,” says Sam, adding that a recent visit to Malaysia got him even more excited. “But a lot of it comes from living in London. It’s so eclectic here and the food is so exciting. There are great Turkish restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Thai restaurants, Malaysian restaurants. I get inspired by that and it also depends on how I feel.”
When I dined at Evelyn’s table, touches of Korean foods like kimchi and gochujang were evident in some dishes, as was a Japanese influence. In the past, Sam has also looked to Mexico for inspiration simply because he found a British farm growing poblano chillies. “I found it fascinating and it sparked the idea of using them,” he says. “We smoked and cured them in a similar way to how they do it in Mexico, and we made our own mole using British ingredients, which was served with pork. I like having that freedom and that flexibility.”
The demands of his job and a young child at home mean it’s hard for Sam to find time to eat on his own. But he does his best to experience as much of London’s dining scene as possible. Some of his favorite recent experiences in the city include dining at Restaurant St. Barts, The Ritz Restaurant, BiBi, Wild flowers and Perilla. He has watched the city’s culinary landscape evolve over the past 15 years and is enlivened by what surrounds him.
“It’s a very exciting place to work and it’s very inspiring to see all the great restaurants that are coming up,” says Sam. “It also means you have to really shine, stand out and survive. The competition is good and there’s a great camaraderie between restaurants and chefs now. It’s a really nice place to be a chef.”
Sam hopes to continue to improve at Evelyn’s table as well. There are plans for a kitchen refurbishment and, hopefully, the introduction of a bathroom attendant to clean up after pub visitors. Sam describes himself as someone who wants to “get better and better,” and he’s always looking for new ways to do that.
“I want to create the best possible experience for guests,” he says. “I’ve never stopped to admire what we do and say, ‘This is good enough.’ fighting. I want us to keep busy. And to do that, we have to keep our eyes on the ball.”
If my last meal is anything to go by, Sam and his team haven’t lost sight of that goal. Going out on the St. Patrick’s Day drinking spree was annoying, but also a sign that eating at Evelyn’s table is all you need for a brief break from the real world.
