Set to launch at the end of next month, The Knave will offer a menu overseen by culinary director Patrick Powell, formerly of The Midland Grand Dining Room and Allegra.
The kitchen at the Bethnal Green Road pub will be run day-to-day by former Allegra chef Attila Gellen.
Later in March a separate restaurant, One Club Row, will open on the first floor of the building. Further details will be released in due course.
The Knave is being billed as a proper pub ‘where guests can come for pints and crisps, or stay for a relaxed lunch or dinner’.
Reservations will be taken for weekday and Sunday lunches, but in the evenings food orders will be taken at the bar ‘ensuring an informal atmosphere that’s open and inviting for all’.
High Note Hospitality
The project is the first opening from High Note Hospitality, a new group founded by Dye and Leibowitz.
The pair say they are planning to launch ‘several’ multi-concept venues in remarkable buildings across London in the next few years.
Centred around a custom rotisserie grill, the food at The Knave will be inspired both by French markets, and the tradition of Sunday lunch on this side of the Channel.
Rotisserie chicken will be the pub’s signature dish, marinated in Chermoula, and served with chicken fat potatoes cooked in the bottom of the grill.
The team are working exclusively with London butcher Turner & George to source their chickens.
Pub snacks will include reinvigorated classics such as venison sausage rolls with spiced ketchup; prawn scotch eggs with chilli jam; and fish cakes with old bay seasoning and lemon aioli.
For weekday lunches there will be a selection of salads and sandwiches including the likes of a signature Knave grilled cheese and a pastrami sandwich with sauerkraut and Russian dressing.
Established in 1880, The Knave of Clubs closed in the 1980s to make way for French restaurant Les Trois Garcons, which traded until the mid-2000s.
“We are extremely excited to be restoring a beautiful building, with such a remarkable history, back to being a pub for the first time in over 30 years,” Dye says.
“With so many pubs closing in London we felt it was incredibly important to step in and try to save this remarkable building.”
Powell departed Allegra and The Midland Grand Dining Room last year following a seven-year partnership with developer and hotelier Harry Handelsman, owner of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and The Stratford.
