MasterChef: The Professionals winner Alex Webb opens his first restaurant as patron next week – seafood-focused Orion in Wimbledon Village. Classically trained Alex worked in top London kitchens including Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, Dinner by Heston and the Savoy before his 2020 MasterChef win, followed by a residency under his own name at the Intercontinental […]
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, […]
Lara Boglione, whose family owns Petersham Nurseries on the edge of Richmond Park, opened a Florentine wine bar/restaurant in Notting Hill this week with her Tuscan winemaker husband, Giovanni Mazzei. Named Trogolo – Italian for ‘trough’, after the communal stone water troughs found across Tuscany – the Westbourne Grove venue promises “a slice of Florence […]
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 […]
Ivan Tisdall-Downes, the chef behind several versions of itinerant sustainable restaurant Native, has opened a new venue in London Fields – this time under a different name. Field Notes, close to Mare Street Market, occupies similar culinary territory to Native, with Ivan saying it is “about exploring sustainability as a global conversation. But at its heart, […]
A Vietnamese restaurant has opened in Covent Garden inspired by the late Nguyễn Thị Thanh (pictured) – the Ho Chi Minh City ‘Lunch Lady’ brought to culinary fame by the New York chef-turned-writer Anthony Bourdain. Cô Thành, on the Henrietta Street site formerly occupied by Frenchie, has been launched by Hong Kong chef Brian Woo, […]
A daytime café/deli that morphs by night into a wine bar/bistro opens today a few doors along from The Knave of Clubs and One Club Row in Shoreditch High Street. Clara’s is from the team behind The Farrier pub in Camden Market, which a closed a year ago. Head chef Elie Fourcroy, formerly of Artusi, […]
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 […]
Leading Spanish chef Nieves Barragán this week opened Legado in Shoreditch – her highly anticipated follow-up to Sabor in Mayfair. Expectations are high for the new venture: Sabor, which opened in 2018, has registered extraordinary scores of 5-5-5 in the annual Harden’s guide – the highest possible ratings for food, service and ambience – for three consecutive years. […]
Middle Eastern-inspired steakhouse The Black Cow has transferred to new premises on the site of a Shakespearean-era playhouse in Shoreditch, after four years at Hawley Wharf in Camden. The Stage development makes a suitable venue for a restaurant that aims to present its dishes in a theatrical manner, with dry-ageing steaks displayed in wardrobe-sized glass-fronted […]