Ana Ros, newly crowned as top female chef by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants (see Harden’s report), will be cooking in London on June 14. Ros, chef-patron of Hisa Franko in Slovenia, heads the line-up at Chefstock, the annual festival hosted by Alyn Williams at his restaurant in Mayfair’s Westbury Hotel. Williams said this year’s Chefstock will […]
Sommelier-turned-restaurateur Xavier Rousset is launching his third solo venture, Comptoir Café & Wine, in Mayfair next month. It follows the success of Blandford Comptoir in Marylebone – praised in the latest Harden’s Survey for its “superb wine list” – and Burgundy specialist Cabotte in the City, both of which opened last year. Tucked away behind Bond Street station […]
Le Gavroche, the Roux family flagship and foundation stone of modern London gastronomy, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a “Back to the Classics” menu of original dishes from 1967. The menu is available until December and costs £90 a head for five courses, bookable in advance, to be shared in the Library […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer reviewed Bundobust in Manchester, a “vibrant and cheap” combination of Indian veggie streetfood and craft beer that opened in December — and “by God, it works“. “Right now, the large, echoey basement space off the city’s Piccadilly feels like a big fat link in a chain, only one that hasn’t quite been […]
The family behind Jamavar, the new upmarket Indian in Mayfair, has taken the lease on Claude Bosi’s former restaurant Hibiscus in Maddox and plans to open an as-yet unnamed “casual Indian concept” there later this year. Dinesh Nair, co-chairman and managing director of India’s uber-luxurious Leela Palace group, has joined forces with his daughter Samyukta (pictured) for […]
Chefs past and present at Le Gavroche are receiving a Christmas bonus this year following Michel Roux Jr’s announcement that he will make up the shortfall owed to underpaid staff members. The payments, thought to be worth tens of thousands of pounds, follow revelations of underpayment at the Mayfair temple of gastronomy that have rumbled on for a […]
⦿ AA Gill of the Sunday Times opened his review of The Magpie Café 5/5 in Whitby with the bombshell that he has cancer, an announcement that – uniquely perhaps for a restaurant review – was trailed by a front-page report. “I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English,” he wrote, promising to let his readers know […]
Le Gavroche will close for lunch on Tuesdays and bring last orders forward to 9.30pm to reduce working hours following a newspaper report that it paid kitchen staff as little as £5.50 a hour. According to the The Guardian, several chefs at Michel Roux’s gastronomic bastion in Mayfair said they routinely worked between 62 and 68 hours a […]
The Boisdale stable of Scottish-themed bar-restaurants will expand next week with a new opening – in a converted Mayfair stables. The latest venue is smaller than the Belgravia original and its City and Canary Wharf offshoots, so has more of a cosy whisky bar atmosphere – topped off with an in-house humidor and street-level cigar terrace. Set over two floors of […]
Mexican celebrity chef Martha Ortiz is to open a restaurant at the InterContinental Hotel in Park Lane next spring. Dulce Patria, her Mexico City venture, is regarded as one of the most exciting restaurants in Latin America, combining research into historical Mexican gastronomy with creative modern twists. The Mayfair venue will be her first beyond Dulce […]
