Theo Clench to oversee new restaurant at former Mãos site

Chef Theo Clench will oversee Cycene, the new restaurant at Blue Mountain School in London’s Shoreditch, which previously housed Nuno Mendes’ Mãos.

Set to open in October 2022, Cycene – meaning kitchen in Old English – will take over two floors of the restored townhouse, which was opened by Christie and James Brown in 2018. The venue has been extensively remodelled to include the first-floor rooms, which previously housed Mãos restaurant.

The restaurant has been designed to feel like a dinner in a private home, with Theo Clench, formerly executive chef of Akoko and head chef of Portland in Fitzrovia, overseeing the 10-course menu. The menu will combine classic techniques with influences from Eastern Asia and Australasia, with a particular focus on seafood, and will be adapted regularly to use ingredients in season.

Every guest will begin their evening at Cycene in the ground floor bar, open to diners only, which will offer a succinct list of cocktails, minimal intervention wines and kombuchas. A selection of bites will be served, such as house-made charcuterie or snacks such as a Devon crab, white kombu and green tartlet. Guests will then be led upstairs to the main restaurant space and behind the pass, where the second course will be served among the chefs.

Cycene’s state-of-the-art kitchen, double the size of its previous incarnation, will make room for ageing chambers for meat and fish, as well as fermentation lockers.

Guests will then move through to Cycene’s 16-cover, first floor dining room, accommodating tables of up to four covers. Dishes will include Carlingford oyster with cucumber and kaluga caviar; mackerel with plum, shisho and dashi; as well as slow-cooked turbot, lettuce sauce, sake and oscietra caviar. A bread course, accompanied with three house-made butters (seaweed, fermented shiitake and salted cultured butter) will be served part-way through the meal as a standalone dish.

Private dining will be offered in an adjoining hearth room designed in collaboration with artist Tyler Hays, which will seat up to six guests around a bronze wishbone dining table.

The wine list at Cycene will be overseen by James Brown, which will change regularly with rare and unique bottles rotated from the offsite cellar. There will also be the option of a flight of soft drink pairings.

BMS Studio, Blue Mountain School’s in-house interior design arm, has designed the restaurant interior with exhibitors and collaborators 6a Architects, Tyler Hays and Steve Harrison, featuring hand-upholstered benches using Kvadrat fabric and artworks by Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud.

Blue Mountain School also houses collections of ceramics, furniture and garments available for purchase, as well as a programme of exhibitions, residencies and projects spread over six floors.

Pictured from left: Christie Brown, James Brown and Theo Clench