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 […]
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 […]
A Turkish restaurant has opened in Mayfair with the ambition of ‘setting a new benchmark for modern Mediterranean-Turkish dining in London’. Chargal, from restaurateur Serdar Demir, has taken over the former site of Jeru on Berkeley Street and offers mezze at ground level, a more formal first-floor dining room and a late-night lounge in the […]
Hospitality couple Lidia and Simone Crepaldi will tomorrow launch their first venture together – Italian restaurant Hoax with a ‘secret’ basement bar called The Devil You Know (TDYK) in Dalston. Taking over the original site of Chick ‘n’ Sours on Kingsland Road, Hoax has a semi-open kitchen run by Sardinian-born chef Riccardo Lottero, Simone’s cousin, […]
Fast-growing food hall operator Market Place has opened a flagship venue next door to the Odeon in Leicester Square that is billed as the largest food hall in central London, boasting outlets from 16 traders across five floors. Choices include Bread Ahead, chicken brand Butchies, Cheeky Burger and Club Mexicana, while the venue also features […]
After a six-year, £73million investment, Guinness this week opened its Open Gate Brewery visitor experience in Covent Garden, complete with three eating spots from two high-profile chefs. The most glamorous option is Gilroy’s Loft on the fifth floor, where a menu of oysters and seafood is served by a team headed by chef Pip Lacey. […]
A glossy new Cantonese restaurant called Dim Sum Library opens in Covent Garden next week, from the Hong Kong-based Aqua group, the people behind Aqua Shard and Hutong. Dim Sum Library has taken over the Long Acre address of the group’s former Italian restaurant Luci. Browsers will be able to watch the chefs in action […]
A theatrical live-fire restaurant with an open kitchen launched in Spitalfields this week, a few minutes’ walk from Liverpool Street station – a first dining venue from publican and music festival entrepreneur Rob Star of Electric Star pubs. Firestarter shares an entrance on Middlesex Street with its stablemate The Star by Liverpool Street pub/bar next door, […]
Former prisoner Nathaniel Mortley has opened his first permanent restaurant – 2010 by Natty Can Cook, in Herne Hill, south London, which offers a refined take on Pan-Caribbean cuisine. Nathaniel served a two-and-a-half-year sentence in Brixton prison, less than a mile away, where he worked in prisoner-operated restaurant The Clink – for which he remains an ambassador. […]