Lucky & Joy
The whole menu is rewritten every day, which is what years of pop-ups buy you: a repertoire deep enough that the board can change and still be the good stuff.
Why go
Ellen Parr and Pete Kelly ran residencies, supper clubs and lock-ins for years before they took the room at 95 Lower Clapton Road, and The Nudge's account of the decision is the useful one: they finally came to the conclusion that people like their cooking really rather a lot
(The Nudge). Parr cooked at Rochelle Canteen and Moro; Kelly came out of Morito and runs the drinks (Harden's). Neither is Chinese, and every source says so up front rather than working around it. The cooking is regional and travel-sourced, so the board carries smacked cucumbers out of Yunnan, a northern tiger salad, Xinjiang lamb chops with onion and pomegranate. At least half of any day's dishes are meat-free (The Nudge). The cocktails are not an afterthought either: Sichuan peppercorn infused into gin, coconut-washed vodka with lemongrass and coriander.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the squirrelfish, which is the dish a working head chef sends people here for. Cold sesame noodles, hand pulled, in a nutty sauce with black and white seeds, which Time Out called
fantastic
even in a review that marked the rest of the kitchen down3. Then whatever is on the cold half of the board, because that half changes hardest. - Avoid: Mondays and Sundays, when it is shut, and any weekday lunch plan, since Saturday noon to 3pm is the only daytime service of the week. Harden's reporters warn about the acoustics:
expect to mime: the rendered walls and low ceiling amplify the bonhomie, so the volume is turned up to 11
4.
What locals & experts say
- Will Samuel, head chef at Goldies, asked in his TOPJAW Best of London episode for the most underrated place in the city:
Most underrated: Lucky and Joy. They've got something called a squirrelfish, sea bass, deep fried, chilli sauce on top.
1 - Jake Missing, Editorial Lead for London at The Infatuation, scoring it 8.3 in August 2022:
Fun restaurants are hard to come by, but fun restaurants with good food are even more elusive. It's an oh-so-rare combination that too often weighs more heavily on one side than the other. At Lucky & Joy it feels perfectly even.
2 - Ella Braidwood, Time Out, three stars in March 2020, four weeks after opening, and the dissent belongs on the record:
Beyond the stellar noodles, though, everything else was good but not exceptional... it was a stingy portion for £14 and the accompanying cabbage salad was, well, just chopped cabbage with some coriander chucked in.
3 - Harden's survey reporters, across four editions, including the one who does not buy it:
perhaps the best Chinese food in town that's prepared by Westerners
, againstthe occasional reporter can find it all a little too hipster for its own good
.4
Good to know
- Where: 95 Lower Clapton Road, E5 0NP, nearest station Hackney Downs.
- Timing: closed Monday and Sunday. Dinner only Tuesday to Friday from 6pm. Saturday is the only lunch, noon to 3pm.
- Booking: a small room with a short menu and a loud night. Book it.
- Price: wine from GBP 29 a bottle, service at 13 per cent, and dinner for two with drinks came to around GBP 90 when Time Out costed it in 2020.
- Hygiene: the FSA records a rating of 5 for Lucky and Joy Ltd, FHRSID 1225483, from an inspection on 14 February 2020. Top rating, and six years old.7
- 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
should-visit — Ellen Parr and Pete Kelly spent years running pop-ups before they took a room, and the discipline shows in the one fact that matters: the menu is rewritten every day, so the board is whatever the pair learned to cook well enough to put out that week. Parr came through Rochelle Canteen and Moro, Kelly through Morito, and neither is Chinese, which the sources state rather than dodge. Will Samuel, head chef at Goldies, calls it the most underrated restaurant in London and goes for the squirrelfish, sea bass scored and deep fried with chilli sauce over it. That is practitioner word of mouth, which ranks second only to Jeff himself, and it is corroborated by The Infatuation's 8.3 rather than left hanging. It stops short of a trip built around it because the only named critic to score the place gave it three out of five, in its fourth week, and nobody has gone back with a byline since 2022.