It’s nearly time… next Wednesday 23rd November will see the launch of the 26th annual Harden’s London Restuarant Survey. Who is London’s best chef? Where is the best value in the East End? Well, we could tell you, but we’d have to kill you afterwards, so it’s better for everyone that we wait for the official […]
Le Gavroche will close for lunch on Tuesdays and bring last orders forward to 9.30pm to reduce working hours following a newspaper report that it paid kitchen staff as little as £5.50 a hour. According to the The Guardian, several chefs at Michel Roux’s gastronomic bastion in Mayfair said they routinely worked between 62 and 68 hours a […]
Joe Allen, one of the longest-running productions in Theatreland, may be facing the final curtain. Never exactly a foodie hotspot – in fact most famous for its off-menu burger – this 1977 recreation of a famous, brick-lined, NYC Theatreland linchpin (off Times Square) has long earned its keep by being “a great place to meet […]
Can it be nearly 10 years already since Barrafina first opened its doors. Yes, it was January 2007 that this phenomenal homage to Barcelona’s Cal Pep beamed down into Soho. The brainchild of Sam and Eddie Hart, they had the advantage of heritage (their mother was born in Mallorca) in their search to bring some genuine Spanish […]
Scottish craft brewer Innis & Gunn will accelerate plans to expand its Beer Kitchen casual dining concept into England after raising £1 million in 72 hours via crowdfunding. The two Beer Kitchens already open in Edinburgh and Dundee will be joined by another in St Andrews in the next couple of weeks, with Glasgow to follow in the […]
Highly regarded vegetarian restaurant The Gate is opening a new branch in Seymour Place, Marylebone, on December 1. The original Gate opened in Hammersmith 27 years ago, and has earned praise from the Harden’s Survey for “serious, thoughtful and imaginative” veggie cooking. A second venue was added in Islington in 2012. Founders Michael and Adrian Daniel set out […]
Bristol’s Sanchez Brothers opened Andalusian-inspired Paco Tapas this week, completing their trio of adjacent dockside venues a few minutes’ walk from the city centre. Casamia, the family’s fine-dining establishment, was no 4 on the Sunday Times/Harden’s Top 100 Restaurants list last year, winning praise from the Harden’s Survey for its “fabulous tasting plates”. It moved from suburban […]
A nightclub entrepreneur aims to remix Chinese dining with Mans Market, a new speakeasy-style venue in Leeds that opened this month. Ray Chan, who grew up in a Chinese takeaway in the Leeds suburb Horsforth, founded the Candypants nightlife events outfit. Mans Market is his first foray into the food sector, and he promises a […]
The Boisdale stable of Scottish-themed bar-restaurants will expand next week with a new opening – in a converted Mayfair stables. The latest venue is smaller than the Belgravia original and its City and Canary Wharf offshoots, so has more of a cosy whisky bar atmosphere – topped off with an in-house humidor and street-level cigar terrace. Set over two floors of […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer reviewed Margot in Covent Garden, a “fancy Italian” where dinner-jacketed waiters have “that easy, relaxed style around food which really pisses off the French because they haven’t a clue how to do it.” “At Margot they can offer you a special of tagliatelle with white truffles for £55 and not even raise their […]
