There is two Michelin star-level ingenuity going on here, even when they’re only slinging oysters in the deep-fat fryer or doling out bread
Pearly Queen, a newish seafood restaurant in east London, refers to the majesty of oysters, though there will be readers, older ones especially, who associate the phrase with those pearly queens (and kings) in suits and dresses festooned with mother-of-pearl buttons. They were always on the telly back in the 1970s, on shows such as That’s Life! and The Good Old Days, belting out Knees up Mother Brown and offering a route back to a golden time when all of London loved jellied eels and the pavements were clogged with folk doing the Lambeth Walk. Pearly Queen, the restaurant, instead takes a regal attitude to the likes of Carlingford Lough and Gallagher Atlantics, and serves them with scotch bonnet hot sauce and lime. It also serves crisp buffalo oysters, which involve dredging Carlingford number twos in panko breadcrumbs, deep-frying them at 190C, then drizzling them with a sauce made with sriracha and clarified butter, and finishing the whole, crisp, jammy, hot, salty mess with ranch dressing.
Pearly Queen isn’t slap-bang in the middle of Shoreditch’s head-thumping epicentre, but is instead, and rather wisely, down the quieter end, between Aldgate and Spitalfields, and opposite the fantastic pulled noodle spot Xian Biang Biang Noodles and the ever-reliable Sunday lunch spot The Culpeper. Just like chef Tom Brown’s first solo restaurant, Cornerstone, his new place isn’t terribly formal, even if the food is certainly serious. There are no strings of pearls or cummerbunds required, but you’ll definitely need the capacity to eat Cornish brill poached in squid stock and butter, with a potato velouté and white asparagus and dotted with squid ink, or cuttlefish lasagne topped with a 36-month aged parmesan-enriched bechamel.
