Victor Garvey’s highly rated Californian-style restaurant SOLA has closed for two months while builders transform the interior, doubling its capacity. The four-year-old venue in Dean Street, Soho – hailed in the 2023 Harden’s guide as “one of London’s finest gastronomic experiences” – is scheduled to reopen “in time for Thanksgiving”, which falls on Friday 24 November. The […]

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Bob Bob Ricard, the decadently fun Soho restaurant famous for its ‘press for Champagne’ buttons on each table, is to open a spin-off rotisserie chicken specialist next month. Bébé Bob, in Golden Square, will offer ‘affordable’ wines and Champagnes, although a £75 mark-up limit indicates that some prices will be pretty high, while the chickens […]

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A dream team of pub landlord Oisin Rogers (right in photo) and Flat Iron founder Charlie Carroll (left) have teamed up to open their “dream pub” in Soho. The Devonshire, just off Piccadilly Circus in Denham Street, is scheduled to launch this autumn. Oisin ran the Guinea Grill in Mayfair for six years, turning it […]

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Three high-profile but very different London dining destinations whose futures have all been in doubt are set to reopen in the next few weeks: Soho’s historic L’Escargot, smart Islington brasserie Bellanger, and Clapton’s funky wine bar P Franco. L’Escargot in Greek Street, the city’s oldest French restaurant (est. 1927), is to open on Wednesday 24 […]

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A newly opened Korean barbecue restaurant in Soho is bringing the pyeon beak steambox to London – a three-tiered box made from hinoki wood, a type of cypress. Chungdam has taken over the site formerly occupied by Chinese restaurant YMing in Greek Street, and is named after Cheongdam-dong, an affluent – and foodie – district of Gangnam in […]

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Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, the tiny West End restaurant founded by a refugee from war-torn Damascus, is expanding into bigger premises to offer a wider range of dishes. Imad Alarnab fled his home in 2015, leaving a flourishing restaurant business behind, and cooked for fellow refugees before rebuilding his career as a restaurateur in London. His […]

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