A boutique wine hotel and restaurant is to be developed at the historic Archbishop’s Palace in Maidstone as the hub of a wine tourism industry in Kent on the lines of California’s Napa Valley or Western Australia’s Margaret River. Under ambitious plans agreed by Maidstone Council and entrepreneur Richard Balfour-Lynn, founder the Balfour winery in […]
Chef Rob Taylor and his wife Donna open their new restaurant Tallow, at Southborough on the edge of Tunbridge Wells in Kent next Friday, 5 November, having left the well-regarded The Compasses further east at Crundale after eight years last month. Set in an old building on the edge of Southborough’s village green, Tallow is […]
US-style BBQ and crabshack Big Easy is to open its first venue outside London next month at the Bluewater shopping centre in north Kent. Set over two floors, it will accommodate 236 diners and offer them a choice of 500 bourbons, tequilas and whiskeys, as well as a separate rum bar. The original Big Easy […]
Husband and wife team Stuart and Cecilia Gillies will open Bank House Wine Bar and Kitchen in their home town of Chislehurst, Kent, in September. The independent bar and kitchen will specialise in serving a weekly-changing menu of “modern European plates alongside a dynamic wine list”, they said. The restaurant will be housed in a […]
A sixth Pig hotel is the first of three new openings announced briefly in January last year. The first to open, in May, will be in the village of Bridge near Canterbury, Kent. The second to launch will be at Harlyn Bay near Padstow in Cornwall, though that won’t arrive until spring 2020, while the Pig […]
Cerebral foodies will gather at the LRB Bookshop near the British Museum next Thursday, September 22, to discuss the gastronomic debt England owes to French cuisine. Speakers will include chefs Stephen Harris (pictured) of Whitstable gastropub superstar the Sportsman, hailed for his “phenomenal” cooking by the Harden’s Survey, and Alexis Gauthier — one of those debts in person […]
Top Spanish chef Omar Allibhoy is bringing his popular tapas chain Tapas Revolution to Sheffield this March with a site in the gargantuan Meadowhall shopping centre. Alongside his four existing tapas bars (Birmingham, Shepherd’s Bush, Shoreditch and Kent), Omar also wrote the 2013 cookbook Tapas Revolution and has made numerous TV appearances including MasterChef, The […]
The third tapas joint from Madrid-born chef Omar Allibhoy (his first not to be housed within a shopping centre) will open on 24 February in Shoreditch. Tapas Revolution will have a soft launch period with 50% off food from 10-23 February. On the menu: Atun con ajoblanco y vinagreta (tuna carpaccio with almond sauce and citrus vinaigrette); croquetas de […]
The “lonely beacon of hope” that is Chapter One in the Kent village of Locksbottom may henceforth be a little less lonely. Chef patron Andy McLeish has launched a lunchtime brasserie to sit alongside his restaurant, which has been something of a landmark for two decades. The Brasserie serves lunch Monday-Saturday, 12pm-3pm, with no booking […]
