Volta do Mar, which showcases food from the trade routes of the Portuguese-speaking world, has made the short voyage from Covent Garden to Chelsea, where it opened this week in Draycott Avenue. Launched four years ago by Salt Yard group founder Simon Mullins and his Portuguese-born wife, Isabel Almeida da Silva, the original restaurant closed […]
A Cardiff hospitality couple have launched two Spanish-influenced restaurants simultaneously and side-by-side at the Lakeside development by Roath Park, on the north side of the city. Bodega is a wine-bar and restaurant serving small and sharing plates of food cooked with fire and smoke, while Ballers is a pizzeria serving Neapolitan-style sourdough pizzas with a […]
An all-day family-run café and wine-bar that champions specialities from the city of Lecce in Puglia opens next week in Covent Garden. Capilungo’s co-founders, brother and sister Gianluca and Asia Capilungo, grew up in Lecce and are inspired by their uncle Luca Capilunga, who has run his own bakery there for more than 30 years. […]
A self-proclaimed ‘New York Italian’ restaurant, The Dover, has opened with little fanfare in Mayfair from Martin Kuczmarski, former chief operating officer at Soho House. It occupies the former site of the short-lived Moncks of Mayfair in Dover Street. Moncks closed during the pandemic in 2020 and never reopened. The Dover’s menu features a range […]
An abandoned late-Victorian sea-front tram-shelter in Sunderland has reopened as a restaurant following a three-year restoration. The Grade II listed building at Seaburn was built in 1901, and had been used to shelter visitors during bad weather since trams stopped running in 1954. It was one of three historic buildings restored under a £850,000 investment […]
Here’s our weekly round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 3rd December 2023. ***** The Evening Standard “Food with a magnificence and flavour dynamism that completely speaks for itself.” In The Evening Standard, Jimi Famurewa reviewed Akara, chef “Aji Akokomi’s more casual sister to Akoko” in the […]
The self-styled ‘underground guerrilla pop-up’ chef known as Whyte Rushen is to open his first permanent restaurant in Hackney this month. With a CV that includes Brat, Kerridge’s and Scully of St James’s to his name, Whyte fuses classical and pop elements in creations such as oysters topped with Monster Munch. He also takes in […]
Kinkally, a new restaurant and bar inspired by the food of Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains, opens in Fitzrovia’s foodie enclave of Charlotte Street next Wednesday (6 December). Named after ‘khinkali’ – large meat-filled twisted dumplings from Georgia that are massively popular throughout the former Soviet region – the venture is a first restaurant from […]
The London restaurant world this week mourned the passing of Russell Norman, creator of Polpo, Spuntino and Trattoria Brutto, who has died suddenly at the age of 57. Born and brought up in London’s northwestern outskirts, Russell was a host of legendary charm host who cut his teeth in the trade as a barman-turned-restaurant manager […]
GAIA, a ‘refined Greek taverna’ based in Dubai, opens its first London branch next Friday (8 December) on a prominent Mayfair corner site where Dover Street meets Piccadilly. Founded in 2018 by British-Nigerian chef Izu Ani, who grew up in Tottenham, and Russian-born entrepreneur Evgeny Kuzin, the concept already has branches in Monte Carlo and […]
