At Teal, Sally Abé Makes Fine Dining Feel Less Precious
In February, Sally Abé got the keys to her first solo restaurant, Teal. Located on Wilton Way, a buzzy street in Hackney, it was previously home to Michelin-starred eatery Pidgin, which closed in 2024 and was replaced by the short-lived Sesta. Abé had been looking for a potential spot since 2019, and it took a long time to find a small site that would be achievable without investors. She remembers opening the door for the first time in complete shock.
“I was here on my own, and I walked in, and it was all dark,” she tells Observer in early May, six weeks after Teal’s debut. “I was stuck here for a minute, just thinking, ‘My God, this is real now.’ A restaurant is something that most chefs aspire to have your whole career. And certainly in the last six or seven years, that was more turbocharged for me. But I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”
It took only Abé and her business partner, Abe Drewry, six weeks to transform the space into Teal, named for Abé’s favorite game bird, a type of wild duck. There are only 25 covers across the tables and countertop, which overlooks the bar and kitchen. The colors are soft and welcoming, and the atmosphere is relaxed—a carefully curated home-away-from-home vibe.
“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 of my books and loads of my knick-knacks. Some of the artwork is from my own walls. My goal was to make it feel very calm when you’re in here. Like it’s somewhere that you can settle into for lunch or a dinner and waste 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 funded the restaurant without going into debt, which they were able to do by sticking with a smaller room and hiring just five additional staff members.
“The best thing about this site was an achievable reality,” she says. “To build a restaurant from the ground up, you need a million quid. Obviously, we’ve spent nowhere near as much as that here, but that’s because it’s so much smaller. And I’m really proud that we’ve done it that way. We can open and close when we want, and set the prices that we want. It’s a much freer way to work. All I’ve really ever wanted to do is be my own boss, and now I am.”
Growing up in Mansfield, England, not far from Nottingham, Abé never dreamed of becoming a chef. She initially wanted to be a journalist, but she 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 London kitchen was at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill. “The first thing I enjoyed about it when I was 20 or 21 was the pressure of it and the chaos of it,” she recalls. “I’m a bit ADHD and drawn to the chaos. It’s so different from any other job you could do.”
After the Savoy, Abé worked at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, before moving on to British restaurant The Ledbury, where she worked with chef Brett Graham for five years. Graham became a sort of mentor to Abé, helping to guide her both at The Ledbury and later at his Michelin-starred pub, The Harwood Arms, where Abé spent four years as head chef. She left in 2021 to helm The Pem at the Conrad London St. James, and then did a short stint at The Bull Chalbury last year as she prepared to launch Teal.
“They were all formative experiences,” she reflects. “You learn and you take away different things from different places. All of the jobs that I’ve had, I’ve had for quite a long time. Staying in one place for a long time, you learn a lot more because you really solidify 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 a few other female chefs. At Claridge’s, there were a couple of 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 impacted me, but subconsciously, it definitely did,” she remembers. “At the time, I was like, ‘I need to be one of the boys, and I need to do this, and I need to do that.’ I wouldn’t let myself be feminine, whereas now, it’s the other way around.”
Abé has since actively encouraged more women into the kitchen. At The Harwood Arms, she aimed for a 50/50 gender split in hiring and tried to give women a chance, even if their resumes weren’t as strong as those of their male counterparts. “If nobody gives women a chance, then they’re never going to get that chance and get anywhere,” she says. At Teal, all of the chefs are female.
“Only 17 percent of all chefs [in the U.K.] are women,” Abé points out, citing a stat from her book. “I’m trying to work on changing that and moving that a little. It took me a long time to realize the differences. I was putting my head down and getting on with it, but eventually, your eyes are opened to the way of the world and the 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 Kitchen, which 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. “There are a lot of people working to stomp it out, and people who won’t tolerate that in their kitchens anymore,” she says. “And that’s really good to see. But I think there are some slightly older chefs who need to get on board. Or maybe they should retire.”
Abé has always had a feminist streak, which she attributes to her mom. When she was 11, she was so infuriated by her school’s refusal to allow girls to wear trousers that she took matters into her own hands.
“I made a petition and got every single girl in the school to sign it,” she recalls. “I took out a book called Know Your Rights from the library, and took them to the head teacher and threatened to take him to court. They tried to pretend they’d 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. She goes out to places in London like Rita’s, The Pelican and The Smoking Goat, all 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, approachable food,” she says. “I’ve never really been a tweezers gal. I find it all a bit too finicky and frustrating. I’d rather put a big spoon of mashed potato on the plate and make someone smile.”
That’s exactly what the menu at Teal aims to do. The modern British bistro showcases contemporary takes on nostalgic dishes. Abé likes to seek out forgotten historic recipes and revive them, like the Locket’s Savoury, a Stilton cheese-based starter that was served at the Locket’s Club, a gentleman’s club in Westminster, around 200 years ago. There’s a very good Scotch egg, a deviled crab tartlet, baked bone marrow topped with snails and English mussels served with Jersey Royal potatoes—all of which feel current, even if many date back hundreds of years.
“I previously found it quite hard to express what it is that I want to showcase, but now I think that it is certainly the best of British food, but also the history of British food,” Abé says. “I find it very interesting to look into that history and modernize those dishes.”
The desserts include a marmalade ice cream sandwich, which has quickly become a signature, and a Penny Lick, which is composed of a small dollop of ice cream in a mini glass, which originated on Victorian ice cream carts. Because not everyone could afford a full scoop of ice cream, the carts served a lick for a penny. Teal offers their own take for £1, which is donated to the Hackney Food Bank.
“They actually made Penny Licks illegal in, like, 1899 because they were spreading tuberculosis,” Abé says, laughing. “I haven’t looked at the law, but I’m kind of hoping that they are still illegal, because it would make great content if the police came and arrested me.”
She adds that the Penny Lick is intended as a bit of fun at the end of the meal. It requires guests to stick their tongues into the small glass, a reminder that dining isn’t always something to be taken too seriously. “I don’t want people coming in and worrying about which knife and fork, or how to hold their napkin,” Abé says. “My friend came in to eat the other day, and she said she found it all quite whimsical, which I really like. That’s a nice way to describe it.”
Teal just opened in late March, but Abé has already changed the menu. She wants the dishes to shift with the seasons, although that doesn’t have to be weekly or even monthly. She carefully sources all of her ingredients, mostly from British farms. She’s aware that perceptions of British food, especially internationally, can be negative, but it’s this local produce that really defines what chefs here are currently doing.
“These things come around in circles,” Abé says. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s, British food had a really bad rap. And then you had the advent of Gary Rhodes and Marco Pierre White, and then Gordon Ramsay in the ‘90s. Now there are certainly a lot of younger chefs doing British food their own way now. And the supply chain has got a lot better. There’s a lot more access to smaller growers and small farms, so you’re actually able to get much better products.”
Owning your own restaurant is a real gamble. Abé knows the early hype for Teal has to translate into return visits from guests, something she hopes to cultivate in the coming months. That will certainly be aided by the restaurant’s sunny terrace and the convivial vibe in the dining room, as well as the food itself.
“This is a massive risk,” she says. “But you’ve got to put yourself out there. Most people are too scared to do it, 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 about what I’ve done, instead of ‘Oh, it probably could be better.’ To just be like, ‘Yeah, we’ve made a good thing here.’ I am very proud of that.”