Restaurateur Martin Kuczmarski is launching two new retro-inspired Italian venues in quick succession – Martino’s in Sloane Square, Chelsea and Dover Street Counter, a few doors down from his flagship off Piccadilly. In both cases Martin has followed the low-profile but high-impact process that proved such a success last year with Dover Street, one of the […]
An ambitious restaurant in a landmark building with a large terrace overlooking the Thames opens this weekend beside Richmond Bridge in leafy southwest London. Tower House, from the team behind Gold in Notting Hill, promises ‘modern Mediterranean food with old-world Italian roots reminiscent of home, in a spirit of relaxed care and warmth’. It is […]
Chef-restaurateur Stevie Parle (right in photo) will next week open his second London restaurant in quick succession – Motorino, a “big Italian” with 150 covers in Fitzrovia, this time with Luke Ahearne (left), the chef behind the successful opening of Lita in Marylebone last year. With its mix of carefully sourced ingredients and slick interior […]
An extravagantly retro-designed Italian trattoria that originated in Paris has opened its first London branch, in the Hoxton hotel. Il Bambini Club is billed as ‘a vibrant escape filled with fresh pasta, pizza, and plenty of spritzes’, and is open from 7am for breakfast until 11pm. Founded by restaurant group Paris Society, it has venues […]
Restaurant critic and MasterChef judge William Sitwell is to open an Italian restaurant near his home in Somerset after taking over a 17th-century former coaching inn that has recently closed. William announced the plan in an Instagram post this week, in which he appealed for investors to help fund the transformation of the White Hart […]
A smart and spacious all-day Italian restaurant called Campanelle – meaning ‘little bells’ – opened in the City this week, taking over the listed former London Shipping Exchange building in Billiter Street. The restaurant has 180 covers over two storeys, with a dining room, wine room and 44-seat all-weather terrace on the ground floor. Upstairs is another […]
Ed Templeton of Carousel (left in picture) has linked up with actor and fellow Highbury resident Theo James (right) to launch a Rome-inspired local restaurant called Lupa, after the she wolf who nursed the ancient city’s founders, Romulus and Remus. The kitchen is led by Naz Hassan (centre), the Bangladeshi-born former head chef at Pidgin […]
Paris-based Big Mamma Group are opening two enormous new Instagram-friendly Italianate extravaganzas this month – Circolo Popolare (pictured) in Manchester, their first UK venue outside London, and Barbarella in Canary Wharf. Circolo Popolare Manchester, which launched last week, is themed around an al-fresco festa in Sicily and set across two floors of ex-footballer Gary Neville’s £400million […]
The couple behind Bristol neighbourhood restaurant COR are launching their second venture in the city this week – an Italian spot called Ragù, in Wapping Wharf. Mark and Karen Chapman opened COR in North Street in October 2022, winning praise in this year’s Harden’s guide as a “stunning neighbourhood restaurant” serving Mediterranean-influenced food with “shades of […]
Soho restaurateur Nima Safaei opens his third venue in the district next week – a quick-service pasta bar that will not take bookings. Like its sibling Italian restaurants – 40 Dean Street, Nima’s original venue, opened in 2010, and 64 Old Compton Street, which followed last year – the new venue takes the name of its address: 27 […]
