in February, Sally Abé got the keys to her first solo restaurant, Teal. Located on Wilton Way, a busy street in Hackney, it was previously home to the Michelin-starred restaurant. Pidginwhich closed in 2024 and was replaced by the short-lived The sixth. Abé had been looking for a possible location since 2019 and it took a long time to find a small site that would be accessible without investors. She remembers opening the door for the first time in complete shock.
“I was here alone, and I walked in, and it was all dark,” she tells the Observer in early May, six weeks after Tealthe debut of “I stood here for a minute, just thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is real now.’ A restaurant is something that most chefs aspire to have their whole career. And certainly in the last six or seven years, that’s been the busiest for me. But I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”
It only took Abé and her business partner, Abe Drewrysix weeks to transform the space into Teal, named for Abé’s favorite game bird, a type of wild duck. There are only 25 covers at the tables and counter, which overlooks the bar and kitchen. The colors are soft and welcoming, and the atmosphere is relaxed – a carefully curated, home-away-from-home atmosphere.
“I want it to feel like an extension of my living room, warm and inviting,” she says. “Everything on the shelves is from my house. All my books and my beautiful luggage. Some of the artwork is from my walls. My goal was to make it feel very relaxed when you’re here. Like it’s somewhere you can sit down for lunch or dinner and while away a few hours and not look at your watch.”
Opening a restaurant without investors is unusual, but Abé didn’t want to answer to anyone else. She and Drewry financed the restaurant without going into debt, which they were able to do by staying with a smaller room and hiring only five additional staff members.
“The best thing about this site was an accessible reality,” she says. “To build a restaurant from the ground up, you need a million quid. Obviously, we haven’t spent as much as here, but that’s because it’s so much smaller. And I’m really proud that we’ve done it this way. We can open and close when we want, and set the prices we want. It’s a much cheaper way of working, which is all I want to do now.”
Growing up in Mansfield, England, not far from Nottingham, Abé never dreamed of becoming a chef. She originally wanted to be a journalist, but didn’t do well enough in school to pursue it as a career. Instead, she studied hospitality business management – a degree that is finally paying off. Her first job in a kitchen in London was in Gordon RamsayS ‘ Savoy Grill. “The first thing I liked when I was 20 or 21 was the pressure and chaos of it,” she recalls. “I’m a bit ADHD and attracted to chaos. It’s very different from any other job you can do.”
After Savoy, Abé worked under Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, before moving on to the British restaurant. Ledburywhere she worked with the chef Brett Graham for five years. Graham became a sort of mentor to Abé, helping to guide him both Ledbury and later in his Michelin-starred pub, Harwood’s Armswhere Abé spent four years as head chef. She left in 2021 at the top tree at Conrad London St. James, and then made a brief stay at Chalbury bull last year as she prepared to launch Teal.
“They were all formative experiences,” she reflects. “You learn and take away different things from different places. All the jobs I’ve had, I’ve had them for a long time. Being in one place for a long time, you learn so much more because it really reinforces what you’re learning. You don’t just learn to do it their way and then move on to the next thing. You do it so many times that you can do it with your eyes closed.”
When Abé moved to London in 2006, there were few other female chefs. At Claridge’s, there were several women in the kitchen out of a team of 30. For about a year and a half at The Ledbury, Abé was the only woman. “I don’t think it consciously affected me, but subconsciously, it definitely did,” she recalls. “At the time, I was thinking, ‘I’ve got to be one of the guys, and I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do that.’ I wouldn’t let myself be feminine, but now it’s the opposite.”
Abé has since actively encouraged more women in the kitchen. At The Harwood Arms, she aimed for a 50/50 gender split in employment and tried to give women a chance, even if their CVs weren’t as strong as those of their male counterparts. “If no one gives women a chance, then they’ll never get that chance and they’ll get nowhere,” she says. At Teal, all the chefs are female.
“Only 17 per cent of all chefs (in the UK) are women,” Abé points out. citing a statistic from her book. “I’m trying to work on changing that and moving it around a little bit. It took me a long time to understand the differences. I was putting my head down and getting on with it, but eventually, your eyes were opened to the way of the world, patriarchy and sexism. I got to a point where I realized maybe I could make a difference.”
In 2024, Abé published her first memoir, A woman’s place is in the kitchenwhich recounts some of the challenges she faced as she rose in the culinary world, including toxic behavior from chefs. Some of that culture has evolved since then. “There are a lot of people working to defeat it and people who will no longer tolerate it in their kitchens,” she says. “And that’s really good to see. But I think there are some little bit older chefs that need to come on board. Or maybe they need to retire.”
Abé has always had a feminist streak, which she attributes to her mother. When she was 11, she was so outraged by her school’s refusal to allow girls to wear pants that she took matters into her own hands.
“I made a petition and asked every girl in the school to sign it,” she recalls. “I brought out a book called Know your rights from the library and took them to the director and threatened to take him to court. They tried to pretend they made an independent decision about it, which was annoying, but we got what we wanted.”
Abé has worked in several fine-dining restaurants, but in recent years, she has become more interested in casual dining experiences. It comes out in places in London like of Rita, pelican AND The smoking goatall of which serve really good food without any sense of pretension. “As I get older, I want to cook and I want to eat more relaxed and approachable food,” she says. “I’ve never really been a tweezers girl. I find it all a bit awkward and frustrating. I’d rather put a big spoonful of mashed potatoes on a plate and make someone smile.”
That’s exactly what the menu in Teal aims to do. The modern British bistro showcases contemporary tastes for nostalgic dishes. Abé likes to seek out forgotten historical recipes and revive them, such as Locket’s Savoury, a Stilton cheese-based starter that was served at Locket’s Club, a gentlemen’s club in Westminster, some 200 years ago. There’s a very good Scotch egg, a devilish crab tartlet, roasted bone marrow with snails and English mussels served with Jersey Royal potatoes – all of which feel current, even if many date back hundreds of years.
“Before I found it quite difficult to express what I want to show, but now I think it is certainly the best British food, but also the history of British food,” says Abé. “I find it really interesting to look at that history and modernize those dishes.”
Desserts include a marmalade ice cream sandwich, which has quickly become a signature, and a Penny Lick, which consists of a small dollop of ice cream in a mini glass, which originated in Victorian ice cream carts. Because not everyone could afford a full scoop of ice cream, carts served a lick for a penny. Teal offers its own takeaway for £1, which is donated to Hackney Food Bank.
“They actually made Penny Licks illegal in 1899 because they were spreading tuberculosis,” Abé says with a laugh. “I haven’t seen the law but I hope they are still illegal because it would be great if the police came and arrested me.”
She adds that the Penny Lick is meant as a bit of fun at the end of the meal. It requires guests to stick their tongue into the small glass, a reminder that eating isn’t always something to be taken too seriously. “I don’t want people to come in and worry about which knife and fork, or how to hold their napkin,” Abé says. “My friend came in for dinner the other day and said it all looked weird, which I love. That’s a nice way to describe it.”
Teal just opened at the end of March, but Abé has already changed the menu. She wants the dishes to change with the seasons, though it doesn’t have to be weekly or even monthly. She carefully sources all her ingredients, mainly from British farms. She is aware that perceptions of British food, especially internationally, can be negative, but it is this local produce that really defines what chefs here are currently doing.
“These things come in circles,” Abé says. “In the ’70s and ’80s, British food had a very bad rap. And then you had the advent of Gary Rhodes AND Marco Pierre Whiteand then Gordon Ramsay in the 90s. Now there are certainly a lot of young chefs doing British food their way now. And the supply chain has become much better. There’s a lot more access for smaller growers and small farms, so you’re able to get much better products.”
Owning your own restaurant is a real gamble. Abé knows the early buzz for Teal should translate into repeat visits from guests, something she hopes to cultivate in the coming months. This will certainly be helped by the restaurant’s sunny terrace and pleasant atmosphere in the dining room, as well as the food itself.
“This is a massive risk,” she says. “But you have to put yourself out there. Most people are too scared to do that, which is why most people don’t open restaurants. One of the important things for me now is to take stock and actually be proud of what I’ve done, instead of, ‘Oh, maybe it could be better.’ To just say, ‘Yeah, we’ve done a good thing here.’ I’m very proud of that.”
