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Chef Monica Galetti is opening her long-planned first restaurant, Mere, in Fitzrovia on Monday March 6, alongside her sommelier husband, David Galetti. It is named in tribute to her mother, Mary — Mere in Samoan, as well as being French for mother. The Samoan-born chef trained in New Zealand before joining Le Gavroche in 1999, rising […]
The trio behind Taiwanese steamed bun specialist Bao are to open a more upmarket restaurant, bar and tea house called Xu in Soho this spring. Bao, which has branches in Soho and Fitzrovia, has been a runaway success for founders Shing Tat Chung, Wai Ting Chung and Erchen Chang, with customers enduring long queues to sample […]
The mystery team behind rising star 108 Garage in Notting Hill – chef Chris Denney and owner Luca Longobardi – plan to launch another restaurant in New York in September, with further US openings to follow. Denney told The Times he is flying to New York every Saturday night and back to London for service on Tuesday while he sets […]
Donal Doherty, who struck gastronomic gold with his hit Northern Ireland seafood restaurant Harry’s Shack, on the beach at Portstewart, has opened a new high-end city bistro, Harry’s Derry. Doherty (right in photo, with head chef Derek Creagh) is keen to catch the new wave of dining that has seen the emergence of half a dozen high-quality […]
Lympstone Manor, the new hotel and restaurant from distinguished chef Michael Caines, who ran the kitchen at Gidleigh Park for 21 years, opens for business on April 3 and is taking bookings now. Formerly know as Courtlands House, Lympstone Manor is on the Exe estuary near Exmouth, and has been refurbished at a cost of more than £7million. It has […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer visited 108 Garage off Portobello Road in Notting Hill, where he said “dribblingly positive reviews, of which this is another, have stacked up” – despite the lack of pre-opening publicity. “There is a touch of the Italian to the menu here, but also a touch of a bunch of other things besides. What […]
Acclaimed New York chef Dan Barber has lined up a stellar squad of London restaurant heroes for a month-long residency of his food-waste project wastED on the roof at Selfridges. Gordon Ramsay, Clare Smyth, Pierre Koffmann, Isaac McHale of Clove Club and Brett Graham of the Ledbury are among the leading London-based chefs who will put in a shift […]
A clutch of London’s most successful restaurant chains are heading up the M40 to open new outlets in Oxford’s Westgate shopping and leisure complex, which reopens after a £440million redevelopment later this year. Polpo (pictured), Russell Norman’s tribute to the Venetian small-plates bacaro, heads the list alongside Sticks & Sushi, Pho, Shoryu ramen, Comptoir Libanais, Pizza […]
The family behind Jamavar, the new upmarket Indian in Mayfair, has taken the lease on Claude Bosi’s former restaurant Hibiscus in Maddox and plans to open an as-yet unnamed “casual Indian concept” there later this year. Dinesh Nair, co-chairman and managing director of India’s uber-luxurious Leela Palace group, has joined forces with his daughter Samyukta (pictured) for […]
Som Saa, the hit Thai pop-up that moved into a permanent Spitalfields site last year, is launching a new series of late-night openings on Saturday February 4, followed by the first Saturday night in every month. The kitchen will stay open until 1.30am with a late-night menu of street-food classics from regional Thailand, including fermented pork with celery and […]
