Chef Stevie Parle will next week open his first new restaurant for eight years – Town, on Drury Lane in Covent Garden, which he describes as “the biggest, most ambitious project I’ve ever done“.
The restaurant will serve British ingredients cooked with Italian influences, and aims to change the way things are done in hospitality. Stevie says: “We are helping to pioneer a genuinely new approach to restaurant supply chains, built on knowing every farmer who grows what we cook. A team of some of London’s most skilled cooks, great drinks, and slick and friendly service in a fun space, all designed to help you forget the day-to-day — and to remember how good things can be when food, music and good people come together in the right room.”
Town claims to be the first restaurant to serve beef from Wildfarmed, which specialises in flour from crops grown using environmentally friendly regenerative farming methods. The beef, from a shorthorn/Angus cross herd fed on 100 per cent grass in Oxfordshire, will be used for the steaks on the grill, and on snacks including potato bread with beef dripping. The kitchen will use every part of the cow.
Cheeses are from Stevie’s brother Mike Parle and sister-in-law Darcie Mayland, who run the Lost Valley Dairy in County Cork.
The kitchen team at Town includes executive chef Olly Pierrepont (previously head chef of Luca and La Trompette), head chef Andy Bright, formerly of Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, and Zinzan Riess-Hollier, also from Luca. For the drinks menu, Kevin Armstrong of Satan’s Whiskers has created a range of cocktails with a focus on small and lower-alcohol serves.
Town has been planned for a couple of years, and is Stevie’s first new project since the Covid pandemic, which saw the closure of his restaurants Sardine, Palatino and Craft London. Soho pasta specialist Pastaio is his only surviving venue from that era.
