Korean-American celebrity chef Akira Back is to make his European debut with a restaurant at the new Mandarin Oriental Mayfair hotel, which is scheduled to open in Hanover Square next winter. The chef made his name at the Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant & Lounge in Las Vegas, where his signature dish is tuna pizza, and also […]
Welsh ramen wizard James Chant, whose Matsudae Ramen start-up became a lockdown meal-kit hit and a pop-up phenomenon touring Manchester, Bristol and London, is to open his first bricks-and-mortar restaurant in Cardiff early this summer. James, who had never worked as a chef, launched the business as a creative outlet three years ago after becoming […]
Highly rated chef Scott Hallsworth is to launch a pop-up restaurant in a former Clerkenwell pizzeria this month, where he will give his Japanese-inspired plates a new twist by cooking in a wood-fired pizza oven. Double Dragon, in a Victorian bank building on Rosebery Avenue, opens on February 16. The Aussie-born chef headed kitchens at […]
The Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge is replacing pimped-up New York-style burgers with a hyper-trendy oriental import with today’s opening of The Aubrey in the space formerly occupied by Bar Boulud. Named after the decadent fin de siècle artist Aubrey Beardsley, the Aubrey pitches itself as an “eccentric Japanese izakaya experience”, offering upmarket food and cocktails […]
A Japanese restaurant that follows a 500-year-old culinary tradition opens in London’s Marylebone next week, complete with a bespoke interior shipped over from Kyoto where it was hand-made by craftsman in century-old hinoki wood. Roketsu, in New Quebec Street, lunches on Tuesday 7 December, and will serve only a ten-course kaiseki menu which changes with […]
A high-end hybrid Oriental restaurant combining Chinese and Japanese cuisines will open next month in the new Four Seasons hotel at Ten Trinity Square in the City of London. Mei Ume, a name bringing together the Chinese and Japanese words for “plum”, launches on June 9, joining star French chef Anne-Sophie Pic’s La Dame de Pic […]
Piccadilly’s long-running Japan Centre is to move into salubrious new premises off Leicester Square in September. Based on the Japanese concept of a “depachika” – the basement food hall in a department store – it will feature a 100-seat dining courtyard, along with specialist rooms offering Japanese teas, sake and miso, the latter available direct from the […]
One of London’s leading Japanese restaurants since it opened in Marylebone in 2006, Dinings is to launch a sister venue in Knightsbridge next month. Dinings SW3 aims to fuse Japanese tradition with European seafood bar culture, offering plateaux de fruits de mer fresh from Cornish dayboats, plus robata-style cuisine using a Josper grill, with a seasonal sake list […]
Zuma, the super-glossy Japanese-fusion haunt that’s a magnet for Knightsbridge eurotrash, has won its High Court battle against a dog-food brand of the same name. Chef Rainer Becker, who founded the restaurant in 2002, initiated the action against the “luxury” pet-food range launched in 2014 by Kingston-based Zoe Vanderbilt. She told the court that the brand was […]
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. […]
