Three-and-a-half years after closing his Hackney wine bar the Laughing Heart, Charlie Mellor is back with Osteria Vibrato, an old-school Italian restaurant in Soho that opens on Valentine’s Day. Charlie (left in photo) is joined by fellow bearded sommelier Cameron Dewar (ex-Luca and Burnt Ends; right in photo) in the new Greek Street venture, which […]
An Indonesian celebrity couple are bringing a French-accented take on their national cuisine to London with the launch of Le Nusa restaurant in the Strand. Actor/singers-turned-entertainment entrepreneurs Raffi Ahmad and Nagita Slavina own several restaurants in Jakarta and beach clubs in Bali and Sumatra. They opened their first international restaurant in Paris three years ago, […]
An Asian restaurant that changes not just its menu but its cuisine every six weeks launches in Edinburgh later this month – with street food from Hong Kong its first culinary inspiration. Uncle Tiger, in Bristo Place on the edge of the Old Town, is the fourth venue from the Òir Group, who also run The […]
The team behind Wild Tavern in Chelsea and Wild in Notting Hill have opened their first Japanese venture – Wild Izakaya on Old Jewry Street in the City, fronted by former Koyn and Nobu head chef Satoru Hashimoto. The izakaya has taken over the former Browns premises opposite Goodman, the steak house opened 16 years ago […]
Ed and Ollie Templeton, the brothers behind influential chef residency showcase Carousel in Fitzrovia, will next week open an ambitious Mexican seafood restaurant on the same site. Cometa – pitched as a “contemporary take on Mexican seafood, seen through a distinctly British lens” – is taking over the space currently occupied by the Carousel wine bar. Ed […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 8th February 2026 The Times & Sunday Times Rules, Covent Garden The Sunday Times unveiled Camilla Long, one of its heavyweight columnists, as its new restaurant critic this week – dispatching her for her first review, as custom apparently […]
A new cafe opens off Rye Lane in Peckham next week with a focus on prime Welsh ingredients. Bara is from a duo of ‘chefs and bread lovers’, Zoë Heimann and Cecily Dalladay – the latter a former quarterfinalist in MasterChef: The Professionals. They say: “Bara is the Welsh word for bread, a simple, universal food that […]
Club Gascon in Smithfield, one of the most influential restaurants in London of the last quarter century, is to shut up shop at the end of March. Chef-patron Pascal Aussignac and his business partner Vincent Labeyrie announced the closure “with both gratitude and a heavy heart” in an email to regulars this week. They said: […]
Brighton’s Black Rock restaurant group has this week opened its first pub – the Crazy Goose, on the original site of the Coal Shed in Boyce’s Street, one block back from the seafront in the town centre. The pub features a bar on the ground floor and a first-floor dining room called The Blue Room, with […]
Leeds chef Liz Cottam is closing her gastrobar Emba at the end of February, in the face of “crushing costs” that have brought her a trio of closures in the past 18 months. She launched the Scandi-style Emba less than a year ago on the back of a successful £65,000 crowdfunding campaign, taking over the […]
