In February, Sally Abbey got the keys to her first solo restaurant, Teal. It is located on Wilton Way, a busy street in Hackney, and was previously home to Michelin-starred restaurant Pidgin, which closed in 2024 and was replaced by the short-lived Siesta. Abe had been looking for a potential location since 2019, and it took a long time to find a small location that was feasible without investors. She remembers opening the door for the first time in complete shock.
“I was here by myself, and I walked in, and everything was dark,” she told the Observer in early May, six weeks after Till’s debut. “I was stuck here for a minute, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is real now.’ A restaurant is something that most chefs aspire to achieve throughout their career. And certainly in the last six or seven years, that’s been more motivating for me. “But I couldn’t believe this was actually happening.”
It took just six weeks for Abby and her business partner, Abby Drury, to transform the space into Teal, named after Abby’s favorite bird, a type of teal. There are only 25 covers across the tables and countertop overlooking the bar and kitchen. The colors are soft and welcoming, and the ambiance 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 a lot of my knick-knacks. Some of the artwork is from my walls. My goal was to make it feel very peaceful when you’re here. Like it’s a place where you can settle down for lunch or dinner and waste a few hours and not look at your watch.”
Opening a restaurant without investors is unusual, but Abe didn’t want to answer to anyone else. She and Drury financed the restaurant without going into debt, which they were able to do by staying in a smaller room and hiring only five additional employees.
“The best thing about this site is that it’s achievable,” she says. “To build a restaurant from the ground up, you need a million pounds. Obviously we haven’t spent nearly that much here, but that’s because it’s much smaller. 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 freer way to work. All I really wanted to do was be my own boss, and now I am.”
Abe grew up in Mansfield, England, near Nottingham, and never dreamed of becoming a chef. She initially wanted to become a journalist, but did not do well in school to pursue a career in journalism. Instead, she studied Hospitality Business Management, a degree that was finally paying off. Her first job was in a London kitchen at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill. “The first thing I enjoyed when I was 20 or 21 was the pressure and the chaos of it,” she recalls. “I’m a little ADHD and drawn to chaos. It’s completely different than any other job you can do.”
After Savoy, Abby worked at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, before moving to British restaurant Ledbury, where she worked with Chef Brett Graham for five years. Graham became a kind of mentor to Abby, helping guide her through both Ledbury And then at the Michelin-starred bar, Harwood weaponsWhere Abe spent four years as head chef. She left in 2021 to take over leadership Bim At Conrad’s London St James’s, he then spent a short period at Bull Chalbery Last year as it was preparing to launch Teal.
“They were all formative experiences,” she says. “You learn and take different things from different places. All the jobs I’ve had, I’ve been doing them for a long time. Staying in one place for a long time, you learn a lot because you really embed what you learn. 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 Abby moved to London in 2006, there were few other female chefs. At Claridge’s, there were two women in the kitchen among a team of 30 people. For about a year and a half at the Ledbury restaurant, Abby was the only woman. “I don’t think it affected me consciously, but it affected me subconsciously,” she recalls. “At the time, I was like, ‘I need to be one of the boys, I need to do this, I need to do that.’ I wouldn’t allow myself to be feminine, but now it’s the opposite.
Since then, Abe has encouraged more women to enter the kitchen. At The Harwood Arms, I aimed for a 50/50 gender recruitment split 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 will never get that chance and get anywhere,” she says. At Thiel, all the chefs are female.
“Only 17 percent of all chefs [in the U.K.] “They are women,” Abe points out. Quoting statistics From her book. “I’m trying to work on changing that and moving it a little bit. It took me a long time to realize the differences. I was putting my head down and continuing to work, but eventually, your eyes were opened to the way the world and the patriarchy and the sexism. I got to a point where I realized that maybe I could make a difference.”
In 2024, Abby published her first memoir, A woman’s place is the kitchenwhich recounts some of the challenges she faced while rising in the culinary world, including toxic behavior from chefs. Some of this culture has evolved since then. “There are a lot of people working to eliminate this, people who won’t tolerate this in their kitchens anymore,” she says. “That’s really good to see. But I think there are some chefs who are a little older who need to join the team. Or maybe they should retire.”
Abby has always had a feminist streak, which she attributes to her mother. When she was 11, she became so angry about her school’s refusal to let girls wear pants that she took matters into her own hands.
“I started 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, they took them to the school principal and threatened to take him to court. “They tried to pretend they had made an independent decision about this, which was annoying, but we got what we wanted.”
Abby 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, Swans and Smoked goatall of which serve really good food without any pretension. “As I get older, I want to cook and I want to eat more relaxed and approachable food,” she says. “I’ve never been a fan of tongs. I find it a bit difficult and frustrating. I’d rather put a tablespoon of mashed potatoes on a plate and make someone smile.”
This is exactly what the menu at Teal aims to do. This modern British bistro showcases contemporary, nostalgic dishes. Abbey loves searching for and reviving forgotten historical recipes, such as Locket’s Savory, a starter made with Stilton cheese that was served at Locket’s Club, a men’s club in Westminster, about 200 years ago. There’s a very good Scotch egg, crab tartlets, baked bone marrow topped with snails and English mussels served with Jersey Royale potatoes – all of which feel modern, even if many of them are hundreds of years old.
“I used to find it very difficult to articulate what I wanted to show, but now I think it’s certainly the best of British food, but also the best of British food history,” says Abbey. “I find it very interesting to look at that history and modernize those dishes.”
Desserts include the marmalade ice cream sandwich, which quickly became a signature, and the Penny Lick, which consists of a small piece of ice cream in a small cup, which originated on Victorian ice cream vans. Since not everyone could afford a full scoop of ice cream, the carts were offering licks for a pretty penny. Teal is running his own offer for £1, which is donated to Hackney Food Bank.
“They made Penny Lakes illegal in 1899, for example, because they were spreading tuberculosis,” Abe says with a laugh. “I haven’t looked at the law, but I hope it remains illegal, because it would be great if the police came and arrested me.”
She adds that Penny Lick is meant to provide a little fun at the end of the meal. It requires guests to stick their tongues into the shot glass, a reminder that dining isn’t always something to be taken lightly. “I don’t want people to come in and worry about what type of knife and fork, or how to hold their napkin,” Abe says. “My friend came to eat the other day, and she said she found it very strange, which I really like. That’s a nice way to put it.”
Teal just opened in late March, but Abe has already changed the menu. She wants the dishes to change with the seasons, although it doesn’t have to be weekly or even monthly. They carefully import all their ingredients, mostly from British farms. She recognizes that perceptions of British food, especially internationally, can be negative, but it’s the local product that really defines what chefs here are currently doing.
“These things come in circles,” Abe says. “In the 70s and 80s, British food had a really bad reputation. Then came the rise of Gary Rhodes and Marco Pierre White, and then Gordon Ramsay in the 90s. Now there are definitely a lot of young chefs making British food in their own way now. The supply chain has improved a lot. There’s a lot more access to small farmers and small farms, so you’re actually able to get much better produce.”
Owning your own restaurant is a real gamble. Abby knows Teal’s early buzz should translate into repeat visits from guests, something she hopes to grow in the coming months. The restaurant’s sunny terrace and convivial atmosphere in the dining room, as well as the food itself, will certainly help with this.
“This is a huge risk,” she says. “But you have to put yourself out there. Most people are too afraid to do that, and that’s why most people don’t open restaurants. One of the important things for me now is to take stock of what you’ve done and be proud of it, rather than, ‘Oh, maybe it could have been better.’ To just say, ‘Yes, we made something good here.’ I’m very proud of that.”
