In one of the alleyways of London’s Chinatown, discerning diners can venture to Evelyn’s Table, one of London’s most unassuming restaurants. Here I find myself on St. Patrick’s Day, which isn’t exactly an evening usually associated with fine dining. but Evelyn’s tablelocated downstairs from the Blue Posts pub, is a fitting place to celebrate the imminent arrival of spring, even if the line for the bathroom is a little longer than usual thanks to drunken revelers congregating upstairs.
But fortunately, the restaurant, which opened in 2018, has a cocoon-like effect, isolating its 12 guests from everything other than the two-and-a-half-hour tasting menu. The dining experience is the vision of Seamus Sam, the third chef to head Evelyn’s Table since its inception. Sam took over from James Goodyear in the fall of 2024, but it was the previous team – brothers Luke, Nat and Theo Selby – that earned Evelyn’s Table a Michelin star in 2022. Sam spent four years as head chef at Evelyn’s Table. Muse by Tom AikinsHe previously worked on Restaurant Story and The Clove Club. He was ready to take the opportunity to showcase his own style. Acquiring an established restaurant, especially a Michelin-starred restaurant, was difficult.
“You always have to believe in your ability,” he told the Observer, speaking from Evelyn’s Table a few days after St. Patrick’s Day. “It takes time for it to feel natural when you come to a new place. And it’s always evolving. I look at our menus, and there’s a stark contrast to when you started. But sometimes you need that fear to push you.”
Sam has generally kept the original menu format at Evelyn’s Table. It’s always been a tasting menu only; The work surface accommodates a maximum of 12 people per seat. Currently, a five-course dinner menu costs £135, while a four-course lunch menu on Friday and Saturday costs £95. But Sam also made the food himself. He introduced snacks before the first course—the eel custard from his first menu is still served today—and developed a bread dish. The sourdough is baked in house daily and served with three spreads: butter, cheese foam and cashew parfait.
“At first, it was just bread and butter,” Sam recalls. “I was thinking about making another bread, but it seemed like too much. It’s getting too filling.”
Instead, he chose to make the biscuits and grissini himself. One of the biscuits is shaped like a piece of wild garlic, allowing guests to enjoy all the accompaniments in different ways. The wild garlic-shaped biscuit is sprinkled with dried wild garlic, one of Sam’s favorite ingredients. Dried and preserved garlic each spring for use throughout the year. He also looks for elderflower to make sure it is always on hand.
“I will make oil from it, vinegar from it, and heart from it,” he says. “I always make enough to last all year. In fact, I bring home vinegar and elderflower oil, because there’s no space here. It’s on top of my bookshelf.”
The intimacy of Evelyn’s Table is part of its charm. The chefs prepare each course in front of diners, many of whom make new friends during the meal. It takes a lot of preparation because there are two seatings each night and three on Fridays and Saturdays, so the chefs can’t hide in a back room during service. It has a dinner party feel enhanced by the location.
“It creates a beautiful atmosphere,” Sam says. “We take the food very seriously, but the service feels more fun. And the fact that we’re under the bar feels very exciting and hidden. There’s a lot of attention to detail, and this is good food in that sense, but it has a lively feeling too. It’s great when people talk to each other, and those walls get broken down.”
This sense of whimsy comes through in the paint. The dishes are beautifully presented and exceptionally delicate, but not all crockery is pristine. Instead of throwing away plates and bowls when they break or crack, Sam and his chefs use the Japanese art of kintsugi, a practice in which broken pottery is covered with gold to repair it. When I had dinner, my friend and I fought over who would get the gold-plated plate as if it were some kind of prize.
“The crockery is expensive,” says Sam. “This is a good way to preserve things. I sometimes do it myself. If it’s a Friday or Saturday, one person will deviate from doing lunch service and just spend time preparing dishes. The philosophy behind it is very cool, but it’s also very practical.”
Sam brought this technique with him from Muse, where Aikens appointed him head chef when the restaurant opened in 2020. Sam, who grew up in Luton and studied civil engineering at school, previously worked for Aikens at the now-closed Tom Aikens restaurant early in his career. This was his first fine dining experience. He started out in the kitchen at a 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, made our own meat, made our own dishes, our own ice cream, everything. It was very busy work. It was nice to have that sense of urgency from the beginning, which is an important trait to have as a chef. I learned how to cook properly there.”
During his two years at Bull & Last, Sam quickly rose through the ranks. He describes the job as a “baptism of fire,” but he also absorbed every piece of knowledge he could. He headed to Tom Aikens’ restaurant in 2012, which was his own baptism.
“He was very intimidating,” Sam says of Aikins. “I was very young, and he obviously saw something in me at the time. He’s one of the best chefs to ever come out of the UK, so I put him on that pedestal. I was able to progress very quickly there because I followed through and was able to adapt in service quickly. It took a year for that relationship to really happen between us, and by the time I got to Muse, he became a great mentor for me.”
Spending time working with other chefs has helped Sam define his own style of cooking, which incorporates seasonal ingredients with global flavours. He’s inspired by whatever interests him at the time, whether it’s a new style, 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 in part from his heritage. But he draws inspiration from all over the world, even from places he has not yet visited.
“I’m definitely in love with Southeast Asia,” says Sam, adding that a recent visit to Malaysia excited him even more. “But a lot of it comes from living in London. It’s very eclectic here, and the food is very interesting. There are great Turkish restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Thai restaurants, Malaysian restaurants. I get inspiration from that, and it also depends on how I’m feeling.”
When I dined at Evelyn’s table, touches of Korean foods like kimchi and gochujang were evident in many of the dishes, as was the Japanese influence. In the past, Sam had also looked to Mexico for inspiration simply because he found a British farm growing poblano chilies. “I found it fascinating, and it sparked the idea of using it,” he says. “We smoked and dried it in a similar way to what they do in Mexico, and we made our own mole using British ingredients, which was served with pork. I love having that freedom and that flexibility.”
The demands of his job and a young child at home mean that it is difficult for Sam to find time to eat dinner himself. But he does his best to try as much of London’s eating places as possible. Some of his favorite recent experiences in the city include meals at St. Barts, The Ritz, BiBi, Wildflowers and Perilla. He has watched the city’s culinary scene evolve over the past 15 years, and feels energized by his surroundings.
“It’s a very exciting place to work, and it’s very inspiring to see all the great restaurants coming through,” says Sam. “It also means you have to 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 improving at Evelyn’s table as well. There are plans to renovate the kitchen, and hopefully a bathroom attendant will be brought in to clean up after pub patrons. Sam describes himself as someone who wants to “get better and better and better” and is always looking for new ways to do so.
“I want to create as good an experience as possible for guests,” he says. “I never stop admiring what we do and say: That’s good enough.” It always has to get better, whether it’s small details like different glassware or a new chicken supplier. It could be anything. We’re lucky to be busy at the moment, but you can’t rely on that or previous accolades. In a small restaurant like ours, every seat counts, and we can’t take things for granted because the industry is suffering. I want us to keep busy. In order 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 have not lost sight of that goal. Coming out to a battle of St. Patrick’s Day drinkers was annoying, but it’s also a sign that eating at Evelyn’s Table is all you need to get a little respite from the real world.
