A clutch of London’s most successful restaurant chains are heading up the M40 to open new outlets in Oxford’s Westgate shopping and leisure complex, which reopens after a £440million redevelopment later this year. Polpo (pictured), Russell Norman’s tribute to the Venetian small-plates bacaro, heads the list alongside Sticks & Sushi, Pho, Shoryu ramen, Comptoir Libanais, Pizza […]
The family behind Jamavar, the new upmarket Indian in Mayfair, has taken the lease on Claude Bosi’s former restaurant Hibiscus in Maddox and plans to open an as-yet unnamed “casual Indian concept” there later this year. Dinesh Nair, co-chairman and managing director of India’s uber-luxurious Leela Palace group, has joined forces with his daughter Samyukta (pictured) for […]
Som Saa, the hit Thai pop-up that moved into a permanent Spitalfields site last year, is launching a new series of late-night openings on Saturday February 4, followed by the first Saturday night in every month. The kitchen will stay open until 1.30am with a late-night menu of street-food classics from regional Thailand, including fermented pork with celery and […]
Tom Kerridge is hosting a week of dinners with the pick of West Country chefs at his new private-dining space The Shed, almost next door to his Marlow pub the Hand & Flowers, in the last week of March. The Gloucestershire-born chef has lined up Peter Sanchez of Casamia in Bristol (Monday March 27), Michael […]
⦿ The Observer’s Jay Rayner reviewed Tandoor Chop House, an Indian “concept” restaurant off the Strand, where he found the quality of the food was mixed and the prices high. “The best dish is the Dexter ‘dripping’ keema naan, a charred flatbread piled with highly spiced minced beef. Black pepper chicken tikka brings sizable cuts of bird […]
Gidleigh Park in Devon has earned the AA’s ultimate five rosettes accolade, exactly a year after chef Michael Wignall took over the kitchen. Only 12 other restaurants in the UK share the motoring organisation’s highest distinction, and for the first time this award has been announced in January rather than waiting until September. Wignall’s cuisine at Gidleigh […]
Ben Murphy, a protégé of Pierre Koffmann, has been appointed chef at Launceston Place, the South Kensington restaurant most famous as Princess Di’s local. Murphy, 26, made an immediate impact with his first restaurant, the Woodford, in northeast London last year, but quit after only 10 months. His predecessor at Launceston Place, the highly regarded […]
Spanish TV chef Omar Allibhoy is to open the sixth and biggest branch of his Tapas Revolution chain in Newcastle next month. The all-day contemporary tapas bar will serve a range of classic small dishes with ingredients sourced from small artisan producers in Spain, alongside Spanish wines, craft beers and what is claimed to be the […]
Anne-Sophie Pic, hailed as the world’s greatest female chef, opens her first restaurant in Britain, La Dame de Pic, in the City of London next Thursday, January 26. She became only the fourth woman to earn a third Michelin star when the accolade was bestowed 10 years ago on her family restaurant, Maison Pic in Valence, […]
Foodie haven Borough Market has launched its own pop-up restaurant to showcase produce sold by its traders. Borough Plates is open from Tuesday to Saturday until the end of March in the two-storey redbrick trustees’ building, which overlooks the market on Cathedral Street. Working with upmarket caterer Cuisson, the market is inviting chefs from some of […]
