If you follow the news and reviews on this site – and even better if you follow us on Twitter – there’s not much you won’t know about what’s going on in the London restaurant scene, pretty much as it happens.
If you haven’t been, though, don’t despair… Here’s the first of our new monthly ‘executive summaries’ of key developments.
Restaurants du jour
Near Liverpool Street, a restaurant impressively housed in a former Victorian school chapel. Just opened, it’s run by the Galvin brothers, of bistro de luxe fame, and followers are unlikely to be disappointed by the quality of the classic (some might say unadventurous) Gallic cooking. Probably the ‘breaking’ hit of the moment.
The new Soho venture from media/art world darling Mark Hix (ex-Caprice group) gets loads of coverage in the, er, media. Most reviewers (Metro notably dissenting) have liked the very English food, but the slightly self-conscious and noisy ambience is not to all tastes. Cognoscenti head for the characterful basement bar (rumoured to be going to be turned into a private club).
Not far away from Hix, and run by another Caprice alumnus (Russell Norman), a cosy Venice-meets-Greenwich Village outfit, where the small-plate Italian dishes – if not quite amazing – are generally hailed as pretty good. It’s a hugely ‘useful’ formula, made more – or arguably less – so by the fact that it’s now a no-booking affair.
Also of note
The relaunch of the failed Ambassade de L’Ile, in South Kensington, in a much less wacky, and cheaper vein. No feedback on it as yet, but it could be a pretty handy sort of place: London (especially SW, oddly) is remarkably short of good middle class French restaurants.
Mega-popular Gallic bistro near Charing Cross, in the news for recently opening a more spacious, and well-reviewed basement dining room.
An Italian restaurant-with-a-heart, on the site of Passione (RIP) in Fitzrovia. Recently awarded 4/5 stars by Fay Maschler in the Evening Standard. We liked it too, if perhaps not quite that much.
Just off Kensington High Street, a grand new bistro where Philip Howard (star chef of the Square W1) masterminds the food – undoubted value, but there are some reservations about the atmosphere.
Housed in the Tea Building, adjacent to Shoreditch House, and under the same (Soho House) ownership, a trendy star of the East… in spite, it seems, of the food. (But then that’s a trick that Nick Jones understands pretty well by now.)
Just open, yet another venture from the media-friendly Soho House group; includes a members’ club, natch, but also a large dining room open to all.
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