The new vegan restaurant from Great British Menu 2024 winner Kirk Haworth, Plates in Shoreditch, has already proved a smash hit – months ahead of its July launch. When advance bookings opened this week, its computer crashed under the weight of 70,000 applicants. Kirk trained initially with his father, Nigel Haworth, former chef-patron of Northcote in […]
The family behind longstanding Kensington Italian restaurant Il Portico has launched a new venture almost next door, focusing on the food of southwest France and the Pays Basque. La Palombe, which opened this week opposite the Design Museum, has taken over the site of Pino, an Italian enoteca also owned by the Chiavarini family, which […]
An ambitious new restaurant opened in Poole this week under the name Thirteen – after the number of courses served on its tasting menu. With a sharp focus on seasonal Dorset ingredients, including many foraged or grown in the restaurant’s own urban garden, Thirteen is the debut from chef-patron Alex Naik and represents the realisation of […]
Chelsea winger Hakim Ziyech is the latest high-profile footballer to invest some of his earnings in a restaurant – a halal-friendly Mexican joint called Taco Taco that launches this month in Spitalfields. After his starring role for Morocco in the World Cup last year, Ziyech – like everybody else at Chelsea – had a less successful domestic season, […]
A Japanese restaurant with a monorail service system said to be the first of its kind in Europe pulls into Shoreditch in the next few weeks. Chuo, in Paul Street, will serve sushi and izakaya-style dishes made to order and delivered by a monorail from the kitchen – unlike the more familiar conveyor-belt counters, where dishes […]
Chef Anna Søgaard, who came to prominence at Manchester’s ultra-minimalist restaurant Erst, is to head the kitchen brigade at a new Shoreditch venture from the team behind Crispin in Spitalfields and bar Crispin in Soho. Bistro Freddie, which is due to open this summer, has taken over the Luke Street premises formerly occupied by Oklava, […]
Jamie Oliver is preparing for a return to the British restaurant scene – four years after the collapse of his UK business saw the closure of 25 restaurants with 1,000 jobs lost and debts of £83million. His first new venue is scheduled to open this autumn in Covent Garden as part of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revamped […]
A newly opened Korean barbecue restaurant in Soho is bringing the pyeon beak steambox to London – a three-tiered box made from hinoki wood, a type of cypress. Chungdam has taken over the site formerly occupied by Chinese restaurant YMing in Greek Street, and is named after Cheongdam-dong, an affluent – and foodie – district of Gangnam in […]
Former Typing Room chef Lee Westcott will next week unveil the first of his two restaurants at a new luxury hotel and rewilding scheme at Selsdon on the southern outskirts of London. Vervain, billed as an all-day dining room, opens next Thursday (13 April) at Birch, which has replaced the former Selsdon Park Hotel and […]
Long-heralded Sri Lankan restaurant Rambutan opens today (17 March) on the edge of London’s Borough Market, from chef and food-writer Cynthia Shanmugalingam (above). Rambutan was first announced last summer, when Cynthia introduced the concept with a soft-serve ice cream pop-up featuring such flavours as mango; jaggery; watermelon and hibiscus; and buffalo curd. Her first book, […]
