Australian chef Scott Hallsworth is closing his peripatetic punk izakaya Freak Scene in Balham this weekend, and replacing it with a more “family-friendly” pan-Asian restaurant called Joe’s Oriental Diner. The former Nobu chef has opened and closed several iterations of Freak Scene over the past nine years, including a site off Parson’s Green in Fulham […]
Kibako, billed as a ‘modern Japanese restaurant’ featuring presentation boxes of exquisite small dishes, opened this week in Windmill Street, Fitzrovia. Taking over the site formerly occupied by Rai, Kibako is from the team behind Hot Stone in Islington’s Chapel Market, highly praised in the 2023 Harden’s Guide for its “high-quality Kobe beef, sushi and […]
An ambitious new restaurant combining Japanese izakaya-style dining with low-intervention wines and their equivalent unfiltered nigori (cloudy) sake has opened in Embassy Gardens, the development adjacent to the new US Embassy in Nine Elms which has transformed the area between Battersea and Vauxhall. Evernight is the first restaurant from Singaporean chef Lynus Lim, formerly of […]
Koyn, a contemporary take on the traditional Japanese izakaya will be the fifth opening in Samyukta Nair’s (pictured, above) collection of Mayfair restaurants when it opens on Wednesday 21 September in the former US Embassy building in Grosvenor Square. The kitchen will be run by executive chef Rhys Cattermoul, a New Zealander formerly of Nobu […]
Jason Atherton’s foray into izakaya-style dining (incorporating also teppanyaki, and a robata grill) Sosharu finally opens today (7 March). Originally the Clerkenwell restaurant (on the former site of Turnmills nightclub, RIP) was slated to open late last year, but its launch was postponed. Sosharu is The Social Company’s seventh London restaurant and includes a 40-cover cocktail bar, […]
