Puro restaurant in Clevedon, Somerset, is relaunching as an ambitious destination restaurant with MasterChef the Professionals runner-up Tommy Thorn on board as co-owner. Originally launched as a neighbourhood spot in 2017, Puro closed down in April last year as a result of the industry’s staffing crisis, before reopening earlier this year. Founders Dom and Alex […]
New laws on tipping that will force restaurants to pass all service charges directly to staff will not come into operation until 1 October – three months later than previously announced. The government blamed the delay on “extenuating circumstances” this week when it published the new Code of Practice relating to the Employment (Allocation of Tips) […]
Markus Thesleff is on a roll. “We’ve opened three restaurants in three months,” he says. “London’s smallest, London’s biggest and London’s oldest” – respectively Juno, the six-seater omakase upstairs from Los Mochis in Notting Hill; Los Mochis City, a vast new operation accommodating 200, with a rooftop terrace above Broadgate Circle; and Sale e Pepe, […]
Asma Khan of Darjeeling Express has been named as one of the 100 most influential people of 2024 on Time magazine’s annual list. The Calcutta-born chef and restaurateur started out by running a supper club in her home, and now operates Darjeeling Express from permanent premises in Kingly Court, Soho, with what she calls an […]
Our round-up of what the nation’s restaurant critics were writing about in the week up to 21st April 2024 The Evening Standard Crispin at Studio Voltaire, Clapham Jimi Famurewa was impressed by the latest expansion of the East London-based Crispin brand, which “cements founding restaurateur Dom Hamdy’s HAM group as one of the capital’s most […]
Squatters targeting venues closed down by celeb chefs have this week ended their occupation of London sites formerly run by Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White. Police evicted as many as 400 squatters from Mr White’s ‘steak, pizza and gin house’ in Leicester Square, which closed down in February after a two-year run. Another group […]
‘Mostly vegan’ chef Rishim Sachdeva is to open a new café at Somerset House on the Strand next month, following his launch last year of restaurant Tendril in Mayfair. His new ‘plant-first’ all-day venture, Café Petiole – named after the thin stalk connecting a leaf to a stem – will feature pastries and desserts from Tendril’s head […]
Former D&D London restaurateur Des Gunewardena will make his comeback this summer with two new openings at the City of London’s Royal Exchange, which will be the flagship of his new company D3 Collective. Engel, a cocktail bar with a live space for cabaret, will occupy the north and east mezzanines of the early Victorian […]
High-flying Birmingham chef Brad Carter will open his first London restaurant this summer – in the basement of a historic church, St George’s in Hanover Square, Mayfair. Called Undercroft, the ambitious restaurant will showcase forgotten dishes such as wild garlic chicken toast, sea tripe and seaweed soup, Tamworth pork with creamed snails, and duck with offal […]
Brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin have announced that Galvin at Windows, their restaurant on the 28th floor of the Park Lane Hilton, is to close down next week. The brothers released the news in an Instagram post which read: “It’s with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Galvin at Windows. We’ve cherished […]
