An Italian restaurant called Cent Anni is launching in St John’s Wood next week on the prominent site occupied by Café Med for the past 25 years. A Grade II-listed late-Victorian building – originally The Blenheim hotel – it has a large outside dining terrace and, unusually for a restaurant so close to central London, off-street […]
Long-running Italian restaurant Sale e Pepe is launching its second venue next week – a seafood specialist at The Langham hotel in Portland Place, just off Oxford Circus. Sale e Pepe Mare has taken over the hotel’s main restaurant space, which operated as Roux at the Landau until 2023; that was followed by a French restaurant […]
The highly anticipated reopening of Simpson’s-in-the-Strand under Jeremy King begins to take shape next week with the soft launch of its signature restaurant, the Grand Divan – famous for roast beef carved tableside from silver trolleys. Founded in 1828, Simpson’s became famous as the most quintessentially English of the capital’s grand dining establishments, but its closure […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 22nd February 2026 The Guardian Sông Quê Pho Bar, Shoreditch Grace Dent hailed the new canteen offshoot from a 25-year-old Vietnamese institution that serves “the best phở in town” – al-dente noodles in a “very meaningful broth”, topped with a […]
Ed and Ollie Templeton, the brothers behind influential chef residency showcase Carousel in Fitzrovia, will next week open an ambitious Mexican seafood restaurant on the same site. Cometa – pitched as a “contemporary take on Mexican seafood, seen through a distinctly British lens” – is taking over the space currently occupied by the Carousel wine bar. Ed […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 8th February 2026 The Times & Sunday Times Rules, Covent Garden The Sunday Times unveiled Camilla Long, one of its heavyweight columnists, as its new restaurant critic this week – dispatching her for her first review, as custom apparently […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 1st February 2026 The Guardian Guinness Open Gate Brewery, Covent Garden Grace Dent was both puzzled and “underwhelmed” by a visit to Guinness’s new “multi-multi-million-pound” visitor centre – complete with a craft brewery, a gift shop, a pie stall from […]
Hugely popular Cantonese canteen Dim Sum Duck in King’s Cross has opened a second branch around the corner from the tiny original – which should ease the long queues for a table. The family-run outfit has steadily earned cult status since launching six years ago, and is the top-rated Chinese restaurant in the under £80-a-head category […]
Sushi master Endo Kazutoshi is reviving his superlative restaurant Endo at the Rotunda for a five-month residency at Annabel’s in Mayfair starting on 20 February, following the fire that destroyed its perch at the top of the former BBC White City TV studios last September. With just 10 guests at each of two sittings on […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant reviewers were writing about in the week up to 18th January 2026 The Guardian Corenucopia, Chelsea The first critic into print on Clare Smyth’s snazzy bistro, Grace Dent‘s appreciation of the Northern Ireland-born chef’s upmarket take on comfort food (complete with a potato menu and a Hibernian tiramisu […]
