Bia Rebel, Belfast Jay Rayner for The Observer was in Belfast, and visited the winner of the Best Cheap Eats category of last year’s Observer Food Monthly awards. “Happily, I can confirm our readers have impeccable taste.” Bia Rebel is run by chef Brian Donnelly (ex-Aubergine, Le Gavroche and Thornton’s) and his business partner Jenny […]
Carluccio’s is to revamp a key London restaurant as the first stage of a new £10 million investment programme. The Italian chain closed a third of its sites in 2018 after being hit hard in the casual-dining crunch, which saw a number of high-profile chains restructure amid increasingly challenging trading conditions. Carluccio’s has found money […]
Italian restaurant chain Polpo is expected to close sites and enter a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA). The once-pioneering Venetian brand, which was founded in a torrent of social media excitement by Russell Norman and Richard Beatty in 2009, owes HMRC £550,000, according to a letter sent to creditors and which was first reported by Propel […]
Manchester’s bold and glitzy 20 Stories fared well in our 2019 guide. The restaurant, which launched last year, has so far lived up better to the D&D brand than some of its other launches, according to reporters. “It’s a beautiful space filled with beautiful people,” they said. But it turned out chef Aiden Byrne’s food […]
New chefs on the block Joe Allen and Aaron Thomas have teamed up with restaurateur Jamie Barber to launch a Nepalese-inspired dining residency at Hush in Mayfair. Allen and Thomas appeared on 2019’s series of the Beeb’s My Million Pound Menu, but failed to secure funding for their concept, which was then called XXVI, but […]
The Coal Rooms in Peckham is to launch Gosnells Upstairs at Coal Rooms, a casual dining space in partnership with London’s only meadery. Tom Gosnell started his mead brand five years ago just around the corner from Peckham Rye station, which happens to be the home of Coal Rooms. [It’s a story we followed closely, […]
Just over six months after opening a restaurant in Clapham, only to see it close weeks later over a rental dispute, chef Damian Wawrzyniak has returned to London to oversee Salt Flakes in Twickenham. Wawrzyniak told Harden’s his primary focus will still be on his Peterborough restaurant House of Feasts, but that he has been […]
Parker’s Tavern, Cambridge Jay Rayner for The Observer starts his review by describing Tristan Welch’s Parker’s Tavern restaurant as “a dining room where the most fundamental of emotions are tended to”. You can just tell he loved every inch of it. The cooking was “a display of extremely assured, confident cooking designed purely to please […]
Indian restaurant Talli Joe has closed and looks likely not to re-open, Big Hospitality reports. The small plates all-day restaurant, which served a fun snack-heavy menu and fusion cocktails, was billed as a strong Dishoom alternative by reporters. In last year’s guide, dishes were said to be “cleverly constructed”, with food “packing a good clout […]
Paul and Emma Ainsworth have bought the lease of the Mariners pub in Rock, Cornwall. It follows the departure of Nathan Outlaw, who left last month. Outlaw is busy planning his new seafood restaurant at The Goring. Not that the Ainsworths aren’t busy. The news of their Mariners venture comes not long after the announcement […]
