The second restaurant by award-winning chef Nuno Mendes is the perfected amalgamation of high-end dining, pop-up style, and boutique location. In the trendy district of East London’s Bethnal Green, within the decadently fashionable Town Hall Hotel, lies The Corner Room, an intimate 30-cover restaurant that continues the hotel’s mission to provide a polished, artistic setting.

As with the rest of the hotel, the restaurant boasts art installations intermingled with the remains of the grand, 20s-era lodge. The far wall is host to a hanging light display, while opposite stands a beautifully intricate black spiral staircase that reaches up to the high ceilings of the Edwardian mansion. There is also a impressive marble fireplace, which, all combined, forms a sumptuous ambiance evoking faded grandeur, punctuated with bursts of contemporary art to provide a refreshing and alternative dining experience.

As for the menu, Mendes is as experimental and pioneering as you’d hope for, without being clinical or too nouvelle cuisine. The dubbed “explorer in gastronomy,” famed for his appropriation techniques, concentrates his efforts on flavors rather than aesthetics to offer an innovative menu that changes weekly. The food may be unusual—sweet squid (and squid ink) served with potatoes, salmon confit with beetroot and horseradish, Iberico pork plumas with Portuguese bread pudding—but not for the sake of it. Of course, our favorite item on the menu was a dessert: peanut butter ice cream with dark chocolate brownies and soft caramel fudge—or, as lovingly referred to by our waiter, the “deconstructed Snickers bar.”

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