Lilienblum.

Lilienblum

The menu was sorted by ingredient rather than by course, so bread, vegetables, meat, fish and sweet each got a heading and a table had to be talked through it by a server before anyone could order dinner.

Why go

Eyal Shani had already put two Miznons into London, both pitta-led and quick, when he took the old Passo site at 80 City Road in May 2023 and opened a full-service room in it (Harden's). Oren King cooked it with him (Evening Standard). The interesting part for a cook was the counter, set opposite the open kitchen, and a courtyard terrace out the back that almost nobody walking past Old Street roundabout knew was there (Hot Dinners). Shani's signature habits came with him: butcher's paper instead of linen, dishes sent as they were ready, food arriving in paper bags.

The room is currently dark. Harden's carries a closed banner and the line Marked as 'temporarily closed' but website has gone and no news about reopening4. Two checks made on 1 August 2026 agree with it. The venue's own domain refuses a connection, and the FSA register holds no food business of any name at 80 City Road, London, which for a trading kitchen in England is not optional. Whether that is permanent, nobody has said.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the focaccia first, blistered and puffy rather than flat, then hummus under a lot of olive oil to eat with it. Time Out's tip was blunt about the pairing: Don't skimp on the hummus. It's good enough to eat with a spoon, but we recommend ordering it with the focaccia2. Then the eggplant melanzana, layered soft in a cast iron dish over garlicked tomato, and the dinosaur bone, which was short rib cooked long with the bone split through it.
• Avoid: reading the menu in advance. Hot Dinners found it a little bit annoying if you happen to read through it before heading to the restaurant and less so once a server was standing there3. Also avoid ordering inside one heading, since the groupings are ingredients and a table can end up with four vegetable dishes and no dinner.

What locals & experts say

• India Lawrence, Time Out London, four stars and Recommended, 24 August 2023, on the argument the room forces you into: Found next to the eternal roadworks at Old Street roundabout in one of those soulless gentrified piazzas, its location isn't particularly appealing either. And yet, I caveat all of this with the fact that almost every bite I put in my mouth was completely delicious.2
• Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard, three stars, 7 June 2023, landing on the format rather than the cooking: The problems tended to be matters of variety and menu construction. Quite apart from the wearying zaniness of its descriptions, Lilienblum's decision to split its menu by ingredients means it can be hard to orient yourself. He still rated the plates, calling them cooked with unexpected flair, potency and restraint.1
• Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners, 1 June 2023, from the opening weeks: The food is good, the room inviting and we can imagine that terrace getting a lot more business in the summer months. That visit was hosted by the restaurant, disclosed at the foot of the piece, and it is weighed accordingly.3
• No chef or operator names it. London's industry-recommendation corpus, 622 recorded votes across TopJaw, the MICHELIN My London series, Condé Nast Traveller, Trippin and la grappe, contains no mention of Lilienblum or of Eyal Shani. For a room this well publicised, that silence is itself a reading.

Good to know

• Where: 80 City Road, EC1Y 2BJ, at the Old Street roundabout end, next door to Daffodil Mulligan.
• Status: not trading as of 1 August 2026. Harden's has it flagged, the website is gone, and no food business is registered at the address. Check before you build an evening on it.
• Hygiene: no FSA record exists to report, which is the finding rather than a gap. The neighbouring premises are all registered.
• What it cost: GBP 34 for the short rib, GBP 50 for lamb chops, wine from GBP 35 a bottle and 12.5 per cent service, per the 2023 prices printed in the Hot Dinners test drive and the Harden's price block.
• Michelin: no standing. Checked against the cached 2026 London list, which holds stars only, so a Bib or a plain selection is not ruled out and nothing claims either.

Verdict

could-visit — The cooking was real. Two critics who disagreed about almost everything else agreed that the plates were good: Time Out's India Lawrence gave it four stars while calling the setting unappealing, and the Standard's Jimi Famurewa found dishes 'cooked with unexpected flair, potency and restraint' in a room he thought was working against them. What neither could get past is the same thing, which is that the menu is sorted by ingredient rather than by course, so a table cannot build a meal from it without a server translating. That is a concept problem sitting on top of a kitchen, and it is why this lands at competent rather than at a detour. Primacy says weigh the plate heaviest and the plate holds up; it does not reach higher because nobody in three years of London industry coverage ever named this room as somewhere they choose to go. The room is currently dark, which is a fact about today rather than the reason for the rung: 80 City Road carries no FSA registration, the website has gone, and Harden's has it flagged.