Highly rated Middle Eastern vegetarian restaurant Bubala will open a second branch in Soho on Monday 11 July. The original, in Commercial Street, Spitalfields, was opened three years ago by founder Marc Summers and head chef Helen Graham (pictured) to general acclaim – and not just from vegetarians. The current Harden’s guide hails its “Tel Aviv […]
A couple brought together by the chef and writer Rowley Leigh are to open a country farmhouse restaurant-with-rooms near Deal in Kent next month. Updown Farm is a grade II-listed 17th-century farmhouse set in seven acres that has been refurbished in the past four years by Ruth Leigh – Rowley’s daughter – and Oliver Brown, who trained […]
Soho’s venerable L’Escargot, reputedly London’s oldest French restaurant, is to reopen its Suffolk summer pop-up as a permanent seaside outpost called L’Escargot sur Mer in Aldeburgh. Currently being renovated for the launch, L’Escargot sur Mer at 152 Aldeburgh High Street will have 60 covers, a wine bar, six bedrooms and a rooftop terrace with sea […]
Here’s our regular summary of what the national and local restaurant critics have been writing about in the week ending 19 June 2022. ***** The Evening Standard “The world of hospitality is in a rictus scramble to recreate pre-pandemic bonhomie without the necessary staffing capacity to do so. There is no need for me to […]
Birmingham Symphony Hall is to open a new all-day café next month, with diners entertained to a free programme of live music from local artists. B:Eats is at the hall’s main entrance and will open from 10am to 5pm every day except Sunday for brunch and lunch, with an evening menu to run alongside music […]
Osteria San Lorenzo, the celebrity haunt in Knightsbridge launched as the Swinging Sixties took off in 1963, will not reopen, having remained closed since last year’s Covid lockdown. Named after the early Christian martyr roasted to death on a grid-iron, who coolly asked his torturers to turn him over because he was “done on that […]
Chef Rishim Sachdeva opens his “mostly vegan” restaurant Tendril today as a three-month summer pop-up off London’s Regent Street, while he continues his search for a permanent venue. This month he completed a successful crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, raising £150,000 towards a project that he has already road-tested with a residency at the Sun and […]
Chef James Cochran is to open a sports bar next month with a menu built around his signature buttermilk fried chicken. Valderrama’s – named after the big-haired Colombian footballer Carlos, a cult hero in the 1980s and 90s – is within walking distance of James’s highly rated Islington restaurant 12:51. The bar represents a permanent […]
Fraiche, the tiny Merseyside restaurant that topped the Harden’s Best UK Restaurants list in 2020, is to close permanently at the end of September. Chef-patron Marc Wilkinson announced the news in a Facebook post, bringing to an end his 18-year run in the Wirral village of Oxton. Famously operating as a one-man brigade in the […]
Here’s our regular summary of what the national and local restaurant critics have been writing about in the week ending 12 June 2022. ***** The Observer “Can you enjoy a good meal in a bad building?” Jay Rayner was in Edinburgh pondering an odd question; it was pertinent as the restaurant he reviewed, Ka Pao […]
