Ed Templeton of Carousel (left in picture) has linked up with actor and fellow Highbury resident Theo James (right) to launch a Rome-inspired local restaurant called Lupa, after the she wolf who nursed the ancient city’s founders, Romulus and Remus. The kitchen is led by Naz Hassan (centre), the Bangladeshi-born former head chef at Pidgin […]
Paris-based Big Mamma Group are opening two enormous new Instagram-friendly Italianate extravaganzas this month – Circolo Popolare (pictured) in Manchester, their first UK venue outside London, and Barbarella in Canary Wharf. Circolo Popolare Manchester, which launched last week, is themed around an al-fresco festa in Sicily and set across two floors of ex-footballer Gary Neville’s £400million […]

A former Fortnum & Mason chef opens his debut restaurant in west London next week – Walter’s Bistro near Hammersmith Bridge, a tiny 12-seater where he will serve his personal take on British and Italian food. Born and brought up in Rome, Walter Cannavacciuolo has worked in London for 10 years, including a stint as a […]
The team behind highly rated Italo-Japanese fusion specialist Angelina in Dalston is to open a bigger, more relaxed pasta and grill restaurant in Shoreditch next week. Called Osteria Angelina, the venue is in the new Norton Folgate development next to Shoreditch station. It follows in the footsteps of the original Angelina, which opened in 2019 […]
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 […]
Giorgio Locatelli is to open a new restaurant at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square this summer, five months after closing his famous Locanda Locatelli in Marylebone. The new all-day restaurant, to be called simply Locatelli, is on the mezzanine of the gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, which reopens on May 10 after a two-and-a-half-year refurbish. He […]

Italian-inspired supper club-turned-restaurant Forza Win is to close next week, with founders Bash Redford and Michael Lavery planning to expand their successful spinoff Forza Wine. The pair started out on a casual basis at the Truman Brewery in Whitechapel in 2012, before switching to a permanent base in a Peckham warehouse. That closed during the […]
Giorgio Locatelli has closed his Marylebone flagship after 23 years, indicating that the decision was forced on him and that he has no plans to quit the London restaurant scene. The tousle-haired Italian chef and his wife Plaxy opened Locanda Locatelli 23 years ago in the Hyatt Regency – Churchill hotel, off Portman Square. The […]
Marylebone Peruvian restaurant Pachamama is to close after 10 years, and will be replaced by a new Italian venture as its owner repositions the group. Fans of Pachamama’s “incredible sticky aubergine”, recommended in the new 2025 Harden’s guide, will still be able to find it at the Shoreditch branch in Great Eastern Street. The move […]
Veteran celeb chef Aldo Zilli makes his return to the London restaurant scene next week with the launch on Tuesday (10 December) of Undercroft in Mayfair, a dramatic new dining venue set in the crypt of historic St George’s church off Hanover Square. The venue was heavily trailed earlier this year as the site where […]