Two Lights is the culmination of Chase’s whole career, from Hugo’s to Momofuku to The Clove Club – it is intelligent, purposeful food in a casual setting. The name itself harks back to Chase’s upbringing in New England – specifically to the Two Lights State Park on Maine’s Cape Elizabeth, where two lighthouses used to beam out warning signals to passing ships (only one remains these days, the other has been decommissioned). The food takes lots of cues from his homeland also, although not in the way you might think – this is a long way from your average American diner. ‘I would say it’s familiar ingredients with interesting touches,’ says Chase, as he delves into the concept of modern American food. ‘In the US, you have chefs from all over the world – whether it’s Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges and Daniel Boulud, or Roy Choi and David Chang – who have poured their culture into our food and created these amazing restaurants. People who cook at these restaurants come from all sorts of different backgrounds too. Say you have a chef who comes from an Italian family and they’re cooking at Kogi with Roy Choi – they start thinking of all these cool Korean-Italian dishes. Maybe they open a restaurant selling kimchi pasta. That’s how food evolves.’
The restaurant takes up a site on Dalston's Kingsland Road – formerly the site of pizza joint Amici Miei. ‘We just heard through the grapevine that this place was closing down, so we got an offer in quick. It took us six months to get in, but that gave me six months to work out how to use this thing,’ Chase says as he gestures to the good-as-new pizza oven in the kitchen. ‘We only have a four-hob burner so it really makes us think about how to use the oven more. If I want to do pan-fried skate, I do oven-roasted skate, you know?’
Working with a proper wood-fired oven has massively shaped the menu at Two Lights – Chase and his team use it to toast nuts and seeds, bake breads, roast meat and fish, and a whole lot more. A dish of roasted artichoke with sunflower seed miso – caressed by the flames of the pizza oven until charred and smoking – is utterly beautiful, perhaps one of the best sharing dishes in the whole of London. ‘It’s a total play on artichokes with aioli,’ he explains. ‘We take a ripping hot pan and get the artichoke all blistered and black in the oven, then baste it with butter and lemon so it all seeps in. We make our own miso with sunflower seeds and blend that with water and lemon – it tastes like a vegan ranch dressing! It’s a bit playful, a bit different, but still absolutely delicious.
‘A lot of it is pride,’ he adds. ‘I think people in London care about going to a restaurant and knowing there’s skill in the kitchen – instead of just serving with miso mayonnaise, we can say that we make our own sunflower seed miso emulsion.’