A theatrical live-fire restaurant with an open kitchen launched in Spitalfields this week, a few minutes’ walk from Liverpool Street station – a first dining venue from publican and music festival entrepreneur Rob Star of Electric Star pubs. Firestarter shares an entrance on Middlesex Street with its stablemate The Star by Liverpool Street pub/bar next door, […]
Lara Boglione, whose family owns Petersham Nurseries on the edge of Richmond Park, opened a Florentine wine bar/restaurant in Notting Hill this week with her Tuscan winemaker husband, Giovanni Mazzei. Named Trogolo – Italian for ‘trough’, after the communal stone water troughs found across Tuscany – the Westbourne Grove venue promises “a slice of Florence […]
After a three-year delay, members’ club Soho House finally opens in Manchester this month – taking over three floors of the former Granada TV studios in the city centre, complete with a heated all-weather rooftop pool. Originally announced in 2021 with an initial opening set for the next year, Soho House Manchester is the first […]
Three new restaurants that celebrate regional Thai cuisine are opening in London in quick succession this month – all with the word ‘khao’, meaning rice or a casual meal, in their name. First up this week is Khao-So-i, just off Oxford Circus, the first international opening from chef Win Srinavakool and his wife Por Haruethai Noicharoen […]
An ambitious restaurant in a landmark building with a large terrace overlooking the Thames opens this weekend beside Richmond Bridge in leafy southwest London. Tower House, from the team behind Gold in Notting Hill, promises ‘modern Mediterranean food with old-world Italian roots reminiscent of home, in a spirit of relaxed care and warmth’. It is […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 9th November 2025 The Guardian Lilibet’s, Mayfair Grace Dent anointed her “new favourite restaurant”: Australian chef and Bone Daddies founder Ross Shonhan’s seafood specialist at the birthplace of the late QEII (fka ‘Lilibet’) – whose “turbo-chintz, Las Vegas-style royalist fever dream” […]
Chongqing noodle queens Charlene Liu and Liu Qian have opened the third branch of their cult brand Liu Xiaomian, inside new Czech-beer specialist pub The Stranded, opposite Charing Cross station. The duo have attracted a devoted fan base for their good-value wheat noodles (xiaomian), glass noodles and wontons served with ultra-spicy meat or vegan toppings […]
The former Launceston Place head chef has returned to the London dining scene with the opening of 74 Charlotte Street by Ben Murphy, on the site previously occupied by Monica Galetti’s Mere in Fitzrovia. Ben said he had “waited my whole career” to announce the first restaurant with his name over the door. “We’ve built […]
La Cage Imaginaire, a cute Hampstead Village bistro that featured in the latest Bridget Jones film, is closing down after 50 years at the end of this month. The 26-seat venue in Flask Walk serves homely French and Mediterranean food. Antonia Macone, who has owned and run it for the past two decades, says it […]
In one of the autumn’s most ambitious new openings, chef Matt Abé this week launched his first solo restaurant – Bonheur by Matt Abé – in the former premises of the iconic Le Gavroche in Upper Brook Street, Mayfair. Sydney-born Matt has spent almost 20 years working for Gordon Ramsay, most recently as chef-patron at his […]
