In February, Sally Abé received 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 Pidgin, which closed in 2024 and was replaced by the temporary Sesta. Abé has been looking for a potential location since 2019, and it took a long time to find a small site that could be accessed without investors. He remembers opening the door for the first time in a panic.
“I was here by myself, I walked in, and it was dark,” he told the Observer in early May, six weeks after Teal’s performance. “I was stuck here for a minute, just thinking, ‘My God, this is real now.’ A restaurant is something that many chefs wish to have for all their jobs. And certainly six or seven years ago, that was very charged to me. But I couldn’t believe it was really happening.”
It only took Abé and his business partner, Abe Drewry, six weeks to transform the space into Teal, named after Abé’s favorite bird, a type of wild duck. There are only 25 covers for all the tables and the table, 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.
She says: “I want it to feel like an extension of my living room, warm and cheerful. “Everything on the shelves is from my house. All my books and a bunch of my kicks. Some of the paintings are from my walls. My goal was to make it feel cool when you’re in here. Like it’s somewhere where you can have lunch or dinner and spend a few hours and not look at your watch.”
Opening a restaurant without investors is rare, but Abé didn’t want to answer to anyone else. He and Drewry are funding the restaurant without going into debt, which they can do by sticking to a small room and hiring five extra employees.
“The best thing about the site was the reality,” he says. “To build a restaurant from the ground up, you need a million quid. Obviously we didn’t spend anywhere like that here, but that’s because it’s so small. And I’m really proud that we did it that way. We can open and close when we want, and set the prices we want. It is a very comfortable way of working. All I want to be my own boss now is to be my own boss.”
Growing up in Mansfield, England, not far from Nottingham, Abé never dreamed of becoming a chef. At first he wanted to be a journalist, but he didn’t do well enough in school to pursue his career. Instead, he studied hospitality business management—a degree that eventually benefited him. His 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 and the chaos of it,” he recalls. “I have a little bit of ADHD and I’m attracted to chaos. It’s very different from any other job you would do.”
After the Savoy, Abé worked for Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, before moving on to British restaurant Ledbury, where he worked with chef Brett Graham for five years. Graham became a sort of mentor to Abé, helping to guide him through both Ledbury and later at his Michelin-starred pub, The Harwood Armswhere Abé spent four years as head chef. He left in 2021 to earn money Pem Conrad London St. James, then did a short e Bull Chalbury last year when he was preparing to launch Teal.
“It was all a formative experience,” he recalls. “You learn and take away different things from different places. All the jobs I’ve had, I’ve had them for a long time. Staying in one place for a long time, you learn a lot because you really reinforce what you learn. You don’t just learn to do it their way and move on to the next one. You do it so many times that you can close your eyes.”
When Abé moved to London in 2006, there were few other female chefs. At Claridge’s, there were a few women in the kitchen in a group of 30. For about a year and a half at The Ledbury, Abé was the only woman. “I don’t think it affected me consciously, but subconsciously, it did,” he recalls. “At that point I was like, ‘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 allow myself to be a woman, and now, it’s the other way around.”
Abé has encouraged more women in the kitchen. At The Harwood Arms, she aimed for a 50/50 gender split in recruitment and tried to give women a chance, even if their CVs weren’t as strong as their male counterparts. “If no one gives women a chance, they won’t get that chance and they won’t go anywhere,” he said. At Teal, all the chefs are women.
“Only 17 percent of all cooks [in the U.K.] women,” said Abé, citing statistics in his book. “I’m trying to work on changing that and taking that away a little bit. It took me a long time to see the difference. I was keeping my head down and going through it, but eventually, your eyes are opened to the way the world is and patriarchy and sexism. I got to a point where I realized maybe I could make a difference.”
In 2024, Abé published his first memoir, A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchenrecounting some of the challenges he faced as he grew up in the culinary industry, including the toxic behavior of chefs. Some of those traditions have developed since then. “There are many people who are working to eliminate it, and people who will no longer be able to tolerate that in their kitchens,” he said. “And it’s great to see that. But I think there are a few older chefs who need to come on board. Or maybe they should retire.”
Abé has always had a feminine streak, which he doesn’t tell his mother. When she was 11 years old, she was so upset that her school refused to allow girls to wear pants that she took it upon herself.
She remembers: “I applied and found that every girl in the school signed it. “I issued a letter called Know Your Rights in the library, he took himself to the headmaster 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 many fine restaurants, but in recent years, he has become more interested in casual dining. He goes out to places in London Rita, The Pelican again Smoking Goatall serving really good food without pretension. “As I get older, I want to cook and I want to eat food that’s free and accessible,” she says. “I’ve never been a tweezers gal. I find it dull and frustrating. I can just put a big spoonful of mashed potatoes on a plate and make someone smile.”
That’s exactly what the Teal menu aims to do. The modern British bistro showcases contemporary cuisine with a casual twist. 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 young men’s club in Westminster, almost 200 years ago. There’s an excellent Scotch egg, a decadent crab tartlet, a baked bone marrow filled with snails and English mussels served with Jersey Royal potatoes—all of which sound contemporary, even if many go back centuries.
“Before I found it difficult to express what I wanted to show, but now I think it is the best of British food, but also the history of British food,” said Abé. “I find it very interesting to look at that history and make those dishes modern.”
Desserts include the marmalade ice cream sandwich, which has quickly become a signature, and the Penny Lick, which is made up of a small dollop of ice cream in a small glass, dating back to Victorian ice cream carts. Because not everyone could afford a large amount of ice cream, the carts cost a penny. Teal offers its own takeaway for £1, which is donated to Hackney Food Bank.
“They actually made Penny Licks illegal in, like, 1899 because they were spreading tuberculosis,” Abé said, laughing. “I haven’t looked at the law, but I hope it’s still illegal because it would be fun if the police arrest me.”
He adds that the Penny Lick is meant to be a little fun at the end of the meal. It requires guests to stick their tongue in a small glass, a reminder that food is not always something to be taken lightly. “I don’t want people to come in and worry about which knife and fork, or how to hold the diapers,” Abé said. “My friend came in to eat the other day, he said he found it very tasty, which I like very much.
Teal just opened in late March, but Abé has already changed the menu. You want the dishes to be seasonal, although that doesn’t have to be weekly or monthly. He carefully sources all his ingredients, mostly from British farms. You know perceptions of British food, especially internationally, can be negative, but it’s local produce that really defines what chefs here are doing right now.
“These things come in circles,” Abé said. “In the ’70s and ’80s, British food got a really bad rap. And then you had the arrival of Gary Rhodes and Marco Pierre White, then Gordon Ramsay in the ’90s. Now there are a lot of small chefs doing British food their way now. And the supply chain is much better. There are more farmers to get better access to small produce.”
Owning your own restaurant is a real gamble. Abé knows that Teal’s initial hype should translate into returns from tourists, something he hopes to cultivate in the coming months. That will be helped by the restaurant’s hot terrace and the dining room’s vibe, as well as the food itself.
He says: “This is a big risk. “But you have to put yourself out there. A lot of people are too afraid to do it, that’s why a lot of people don’t open restaurants. One of the important things for me now is to check and be proud of what I’ve done, instead of ‘Oh, maybe it could be better.’ It’s just like, ‘Yeah, we did a good thing here.’ I am very proud of that.”
