Mayfair, International Restaurant Guide

2019 Review: Juan Santa Cruz’s gorgeous, gold-and-ebony Mayfair yearling (on the former site of Sumosan, RIP) draws a smart, Eurotrashy crowd and is undoubtedly “beautiful, and great for people watching”. “You don’t mind a high-end price tag, if the food measures up” too, but whereas some fans describe “such amazing and different flavours from the tapas-style menu” there is a high proportion for whom results are “just uneventful and unexciting”.

In late 2018, Corbin & King lost the management contract for this luxurious Art Deco hotel near Selfridges (to the Barclay family), including its “exceptional-looking”, 1920s NYC-style grill room. However for a certain kind of swish American experience, it still nails it: for example, even a reporter who thinks “it’s tailed off a bit since leaving the care of C&K” feels “it’s still a must-visit to experience the classic, US-country-club style”; and the “transatlantic, slightly retro cuisine” that goes with that (“very rich – but great if that’s to your taste”). On the flip side, a cynical view is that it’s at risk of becoming “a theme park for nostalgic Americans longing for the food of their childhood”. Top Tip – “a wonderful breakfast” for business or pleasure.

In Crown Estates’s little restaurant enclave, just off Regent Street, the site that was Magpie (RIP) was relaunched in summer 2019 under an ‘agile approach’ that envisages ‘the ability to invite more creative partners on a short-term basis to add fresh, exciting ideas to London’s dining scene’. We think that may mean a series of pop-ups. First up: Chris Leach (Pitt Cue, Kitty Fishers et al) and David Carter (of Smokestak), whose menu will feature various hand-made salumi and hand-rolled pasta dishes.

This London farmer's market fave from Isidora Popović - who started trading with help from The Prince's Trust and now supplies the likes of F&M and Harrods - launches its first permanent café in Mayfair. There are savoury options in the form of veggie and meat stews and curries, but the street food offering is all about delicious desserts, and we expect the café to be no different.

2019 Review: On the former site of Quattro Passi (RIP) – an opening from a swish, well-established international chain with ‘clubstaurants’ from Dubai to Rio de Janeiro – arrived in Mayfair in Spring 2018. Culinarily speaking it takes its lead from the South of France, with a Provençal-inspired menu.

Spanish celeb-haunt Amazonico (famous for its lushly forested interior - think Rainforest Cafe without the animals or kids) has now opened in the former Allied Irish Bank building in Berkeley Square.