Ana Ros, newly crowned as top female chef by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants (see Harden’s report), will be cooking in London on June 14. Ros, chef-patron of Hisa Franko in Slovenia, heads the line-up at Chefstock, the annual festival hosted by Alyn Williams at his restaurant in Mayfair’s Westbury Hotel. Williams said this year’s Chefstock will […]
GBR – for Great British Restaurant – is the straight-to-the-point name of a new all-day dining venue opening in Dukes, the St James’s hotel, in May. Chef Nigel Mendham, who has worked in country house hotels including the Samling in the Lake District, South Lodge in Sussex and the Lygon Arms in the Cotswolds, has […]
⦿ Marina O’Loughlin of the Guardian reviewed Popolo 8/10 in Shoreditch,”run with utter grace by Jonathan Lawson, [an] ex-Theo Randall chef”. “The main flavour here is Italian classics, flawlessly realised… and dishes that straddle cuisines. Some appear to be the result of a particularly febrile imagination: cool, thick labneh studded with a hectic combination of crisp-shelled fried […]
⦿ The Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin reviewed Trump Turnberry 6/10 in Ayrshire, where she arrived with “prejudices fully erect” and is told in a whisper, “We’re not allowed to talk politics.” “Yes, there’s a lot to loathe. I hate that the hotel celebrates Scottishness in a way only a tourist can love: charming doormen waft you indoors […]
Rising star chef Anton Piotrowski has left Devon gastropub the Treby Arms and re-launched his career in a small Plymouth restaurant. He blamed the sudden move on the breakdown of his marriage. Piotrowski turned the modest pub in his home village of Sparkwell into a multi-award-winning destination with an ambitious menu over a six-year period, winning MasterChef: […]
A retirement village in Hampshire has become the first to win national recognition for the quality of its restaurant with the award of an AA rosette. The Redwood Bistro at Bishopstoke Park retirement community in Eastleigh – which is open to non-residents – received the award following an anonymous inspection visit in December. While the announcement may have come […]
Australian-style burger café Ben’s Canteen has raised more than £400,000 in a crowdfunding campaign towards an ambitious expansion programme from its Battersea base. Ben Walton opened the original café in 2011, adding a branch in nearby Earlsfield in 2015. The next phase begins with a high-profile branch at the new Battersea Power Station development in September, the […]
⦿ In the Observer, Jay Rayner reviewed Barbecoa, the new Piccadilly flagship from Jamie Oliver (pictured, left, with Raymond Blanc), a grand and expensive “meat and smoke extravaganza“. “It feels like a big New York brasserie crossed with a branch of Hawksmoor. The real action is downstairs in a basement space which laughs in the […]
Cotswolds-based MasterChef finalist and former banker Andrew Kojima is opening his first restaurant, Koj, in Cheltenham next week on the back of successful pop-up and crowd-funding campaigns. He trialled the venture – and the Regent Street venue – as a pop-up in the run-up to Christmas, generating enough interest to raise £55,000 from more than 200 backers. […]
Brighton grill specialist The Coal Shed is to open a branch in London at the new One Tower Bridge development on the south bank of the Thames later this year. It will be the first foray into the capital for restaurateur Raz Helatat, six years after he launched the original Coal Shed – described by this year’s […]
