Former Apprentice contestant April Jackson has closed down her six-year-old Brixton café and rum bar Three Little Birds, replacing it with Wood & Water, which opens this evening (25 November) offering a more sophisticated menu of “British food with Jamaican soul”. This translates as modern British dishes punctuated with Jamaican touches – jerk glaze on […]
Former Ottolenghi head chef Esra Muslu opens her first London restaurant next week, based on Istanbulite home cooking including recipes and traditional methods handed down by her mother. Zahter, named after a wild herb in the thyme family that grows in southern Turkey, is conceived as Esra’s “love letter” to her native country. It occupies […]
Here’s our regular summary of what the national and local restaurant critics have been writing about in the week ending 21 November 2021. ***** The Evening Standard Catalyst Cafe in Holborn has “no hype-stoking publicist or obvious Hellenic signifiers”, but is “serving some of the best Greek food in London” thanks to “the considerable gifts […]
The most ambitious new museum restaurant in Britain opens next week at the World of Wedgwood, a visitor attraction and ceramics collection in the Staffordshire village of Barlaston. Lunar is directed by Niall Keating (above right), executive chef at Dorset’s Whatley Manor and a former Michelin Young European Chef of the Year and Great British […]
A prominent Chelsea pub formerly owned by father-and-son football legends Frank Lampard and Frank Lampard senior was relaunched last week as the first hospitality venture from furniture designer Timothy Oulton. The Chelsea Pig, formerly the Pig’s Ear, on the corner of Old Church Street and Poulton Street, is believed to be the oldest pub in […]
Global celebrity chef Daniel Humm is quitting his restaurant at Claridge’s in Mayfair at the end of the year after the hotel blocked his desired move to a plant-based menu. The Swiss chef, whose Eleven Madison Park headquarters in New York topped the World’s Best 50 Restaurants list in 2017, has undergone a Damascene conversion […]
Chef Josh Katz (above), his brother Paul and business partner Matt Bianchi are to open their third restaurant on Thursday next week. Carmel, in Queen’s Park, will continue along the Eastern Mediterranean trail they have blazed successfully at Berber & Q in Haggerston and Shawarma Bar in Exmouth Market. The new restaurant features an open […]
Pandemic causes record closures and churn amongst London restaurants • The price of meals out continues to rise above inflation, with the emergence of the £200+ per head restaurant • Core by Clare Smyth in West London and Da Terra in the East End identified as the best London restaurants • African- and Caribbean-based cuisine […]
Here’s our regular summary of what the national and local restaurant critics have been writing about in the week ending 15 November 2021. Now we are nearing the end of the year, who’s going to be the first critic to publish their “best meals of 2021”? ***** The Sunday Times Is fine-dining dead? Marina O’Loughlin […]
Qavali, a glamorous Indo-Persian restaurant, opened this month in Birmingham’s Brindley Place, inspired by the ecstatic Sufi singing tradition (also known as qawwali) whose adherents stretch from Turkey across Iran and Afghanistan into India and Pakistan. With a menu that takes “the best dishes from each cuisine” in this region, the 250-seat venue features a […]