It was some two decades ago, but the words still cut like a fresh wound. Sally Abé was toiling as a young woman in the kitchens of a well-known upscale restaurant in the centre of London. They were flung at her, she tells me, as a throw-away remark, from a busy chef-proprietor grappling with the stresses of a busy service; come clean-down, they would doubtless have forgotten them. But Abé has worn them heavily in the years that followed, determined to prove that mighty chef wrong.
“You’ll never amount to anything”, was what she was told. And even now as she preps before service, perfects and dispenses dishes at the pass, she works to dispel that prophecy. She does this at Teal, a small neighbourhood place in Hackney, on a stretch of Wilton Way where hospitality is allowed to spill out onto the pavements. In summer, it is a charming haven for food lovers.
This is where Abé, having headed up a number of posh kitchens in London and the Cotswolds, now has her own thing. The exterior view, revealing short linen curtains, has a whiff of French bistro about it; inside there’s a smattering of tables and a tiny bar. The restaurant’s name suggests an acute attitude to provenance (this isn’t just any old duck); its wooden panelling is painted an appropriate blue-green hue.