After closing his Fitzrovia flagship Dabbous in summer 2017, as well as nearby Barnyard, Ollie Dabbous is back with a new venture. Hide occupies a huge (250-cover) space on Mayfair’s Piccadilly, offering dining and drinking across three floors, connected by a striking spiral staircase, with spectacular views over Green Park. The restaurant opened today (17 […]
Tommy Banks, the chef behind Oldstead’s revered Black Swan (number eight on the Harden’s 100 list of the country’s best restaurants), has announced plans for a second venture called Roots in York this autumn. Banks “produces exceptional, exciting – even mind-blowing – tastes and textures, with subtlety, intensity, and integrity” at Black Swan, which is “well […]
Gary Usher, the king of Kickstarter chefs, is chasing his third round of crowdfunding to launch the fourth restaurant of his northwestern empire – with fellow chefs led by Tom Kerridge (pictured) rallying to help. Usher needs pledges totalling £200,000 – significantly more than in his first two campaigns – by June 8 in order to proceed with his planned restaurant Wreckfish in Liverpool. […]
Somerset craft brewer the Wild Beer Co has raised £1.8million – almost double its £1 million target – through crowdfunding towards a new flagship brewery with a destination restaurant. The £10 million development will be at the Bath and West Showground near Shepton Mallet. It is three miles from the company’s existing Westcombe brewery, which […]
⦿ In the Observer, Jay Rayner reviewed Skosh, in York, which he found “the ideal of what an ambitious, independent restaurant should be”. “Neil Bentinck, formerly the head chef of Van Zeller in Harrogate, is a modern British cook who also manages to riff on the flavours of Japan and the Middle East without confusing either […]
Chef Atul Kochhar of Benares – Mayfair’s well-known ‘nouvelle Indian’ – is turning the tables by launching his first restaurant to celebrate British food — and in a quintessentially English setting. Hawkyns opens on January 15 inside the marvellously traditional Crown Inn in Amersham. (It is named after Sir William Hawkyns, apparently a representative of the […]
Food-obsessed cousins Mark Kimber (left in photo) and Harry Smith are opening Plot, a bijou 15-seat restaurant, in a converted market stall inside historic Tooting Broadway Market on January 11. The pair both grew up in Tooting, and have hired chef Giles Estob to design a menu of small plates reflecting their interest in seasonal British produce. Meat will […]
Bristol’s Sanchez Brothers opened Andalusian-inspired Paco Tapas this week, completing their trio of adjacent dockside venues a few minutes’ walk from the city centre. Casamia, the family’s fine-dining establishment, was no 4 on the Sunday Times/Harden’s Top 100 Restaurants list last year, winning praise from the Harden’s Survey for its “fabulous tasting plates”. It moved from suburban […]
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 […]
An ambitious Mediterranean restaurant featuring innovative chef swaps with twinned businesses across Europe is scheduled to open at Weetwood Hall on the outskirts of Leeds in February. Convive is the brainchild of veteran Yorkshire restaurateur Martin Pickles (left in photo) and his old friend Martin Hicks, managing director of Weetwood Hall. The pair met when they were both […]