A clutch of London’s most successful restaurant chains are heading up the M40 to open new outlets in Oxford’s Westgate shopping and leisure complex, which reopens after a £440million redevelopment later this year. Polpo (pictured), Russell Norman’s tribute to the Venetian small-plates bacaro, heads the list alongside Sticks & Sushi, Pho, Shoryu ramen, Comptoir Libanais, Pizza […]

Continue reading


Billed as the world’s most expensive pho, two bowls of the Vietnamese national dish could be yours if you’re prepared to pay more than £1,000 for the privilege. The “super pho” concocted by Shaftesbury Avenue restaurant Pho and Bun using Kobe beef is being auctioned to raise funds for Action on Hunger. Owner Andy Le […]

Continue reading


This summer Red’s True Barbecue bucked the trend of southern restaurants heading to Manchester (Hawksmoor, Iberica, Burger & Lobster etc) by bringing a northern-only operation to the big smoke. Now this chain of US-inspired, dude food emporia has announced the acquisition of another new site, opening in Liverpool in November. The building, on Hanover Street, a former […]

Continue reading


Wahaca, Pho and Vapiano have all snapped up sites in Manchester’s Corn Exchange, which will reopen following a £30m refurb in June next year.  Thomasina Miers’s chain of vibrant Mexican operations (pictured) has been confirmed as one of the development’s flagship tenants alongside restaurants opening their first Mancunian outposts. Continental-style food court Vapiano, which already has […]

Continue reading


Vietnamese restaurant group Pho is growing apace with the addition of another site in the City, this time in the One New Change shopping centre near St Paul’s, also home to Jamie’s Barbecoa and Gordo’s Bread Street Kitchen. Opening on the former site of a Caffe Concerto, it will be the company’s twelfth premises and […]

Continue reading