US-based Korean celebrity chef Akira Back launches a new restaurant in a Mayfair luxury hotel next week – six months after making his London debut just a few minutes’ walk away in another hotel. Lilli by Akira Back, which opens on Wednesday 2 April, is an all-day restaurant at the new Montcalm Mayfair, a new 150-room […]
A restaurant dating back to 1757 will launch its first outpost in London’s Chinatown next week – introducing a new variety of noodles to the capital. Songhelou in Wardour Street is descended from a restaurant that opened during the Qing dynasty in Suzhou, a city about 50 miles west of Shanghai. The long-lived Qianlong Emperor is […]
Leeds favourite The Swine That Dines reopens next week under a new name and in new, larger premises – as the Swine Bistro in Headingley. The original Swine, a former sandwich shop on North Street in the city centre, has won increasing fame for founders Stu and Jo Myers in its 12 years – scoring an […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 23rd March 2025 London Standard Senza Fondo!, Shoreditch David Ellis was primed to castigate this cod-Italian for its childish promise of “bottomless lasagna” (misspelt, he snootily corrected: it should be the plural form, lasagne), for the exclamation mark in […]
Fulham Football Club has announced its two latest signings for next season – chefs Alex Dilling (left) of the Café Royal and Oli Marlow (right) of Roganic in Hong Kong and Aulis in Phuket – who will be overseeing match-day meals in the Gourmet restaurant of the club’s imposing new Riverside stand. Adam Byatt of Trinity […]
Soho restaurateur Nima Safaei opens his third venue in the district next week – a quick-service pasta bar that will not take bookings. Like its sibling Italian restaurants – 40 Dean Street, Nima’s original venue, opened in 2010, and 64 Old Compton Street, which followed last year – the new venue takes the name of its address: 27 […]
An ambitious new restaurant headed by a former River Cafe chef opens in a Grade II listed townhouse opposite the Natural History Museum in South Kensington next week. The Lavery – named after a former resident, Irish-born artist Sir John Lavery – has taken over the premises of the former Cromwell Place café, and will offer […]
The Peat Inn, one of Scotland’s leading restaurants for several decades, is on sale with chef-patron Geoffrey Smeddle and his wife Katherine deciding to move on after 19 years. The 250-year-old inn near St Andrews in Fife wins consistent praise in the Harden’s guide for its ‘old-school class’ and has been a regular on the […]
Pimped-up sandwiches are having a moment, with no fewer than three upmarket venues opening in London in quick succession. First up is Crunch, rhymingly billed as ‘a contemporary hack to a traditional snack’, which has opened in Dean Street, Soho after two years as a stall in Old Spitalfields Market. The ‘hack’ consists of non-sweetened […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 16th March 2025 London Standard Calong, Stoke Newington David Ellis was puzzled at this pop-up-gone-permanent restaurant from Joo Won, the Korean-born former head chef at the Galvin Brothers’ Windows. If his ambition was to produce London’s best Korean food, […]
