A Sri Lankan restaurant that started out in a converted horsebox launches next week in its first permanent premises – the former Hanoi Bike Shop venue in Glasgow’s West End. Kochchi, named after a Sri Lankan variety of chilli, has been one of the most popular kitchens at the Bonnie and Wild food hall in Edinburgh […]
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 […]
DakaDaka, an ambitious Georgian restaurant from a newly formed hospitality outfit, opens tomorrow in Mayfair’s Heddon Street foodie enclave, tucked away off Regent Street. Taking over the site formerly occupied by hit restaurants Manteca and Fallow, DakaDaka is the debut London project from Berkeley Square Hospitality, headed by Georgians Giorgi Mindiashvili and chef patron Mitz […]
Chef Dara Klein launches her first standalone venue this week, opening Tiella Trattoria & Bar in a traditional mid-Victorian pub near Columbia Road flower market in east London – a follow-up to her extended residency at the Compton Arms in Islington, where Dara’s rustic Italian cooking earned widespread acclaim. She has teamed up for the new […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 11th January 2026 The Guardian Martino’s, Chelsea Grace Dent hailed the “beautiful bedlam” of restaurateur Martin (‘The Dover’) Kuczmarski’s “glitzy, sexy, mock-Italian trattoria” in Sloane Square – a place so superbly designed and operated, at once so cool and so laidback, […]
Cardiff diners have two interesting new options for 2026 following the Christmas launch of natural wine bar and restaurant Ogof in Canton and next week’s relaunch by chef Tom Simmons (pictured) of his Pontcanna flagship Thomas as a more relaxed brasserie. Ogof has taken over the former site of Poca and La Cuina on King’s […]
Well-travelled chef Ed Baillieu, previously executive chef of the Pelican in Notting Hill and the Hero in Maida Vale, has opened his first venue in London – close to where he grew up in Putney. Ruth’s, a neighbourhood restaurant and bar, has taken over a corner spot on the Lower Richmond Road occupied for 40 years […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about over the holiday period up to 4th January 2026 The Guardian Poon’s at Somerset House, Aldwych Grace Dent was an immediate convert to Amy Poon’s relaunch of the family’s restaurant brand in the New Wing of Somerset House, declaring it simultaneously “sweet, confident, feminine, […]
Veteran Vietnamese restaurant Sông Quê is to open its second branch early in the New Year, having taken over the Spitalfields premises occupied by Tom Brown’s Pearly Queen until it closed down in October. An early stakeholder on the Kingsland Road ‘Pho Mile’ when it opened in 2002, Sông Quê has been a regular in […]
Glasgow-based chef-patron Peter McKenna is to close his Finnieston fixture The Gannet at the end of the year, replacing it in early 2026 with a more casual bistro called Eleven Fifty Five, after its address in Argyle Street. The new venture, in partnership with maître d’ Kevin Dow, is pitched as an “upscale but approachable […]
