Soho’s legendary Groucho Club, a magnet for hell-raisers since Oliver Reed and Ken Russell (pictured) attended the opening party in 1985, has been acquired by the Artfarm hospitality group for a reported £40 million. Owned by Swiss art dealers Manuela and Iwan Wirth, Artfarm began as a museum café at the country offshoot of their […]
Veteran Leeds restaurateur Joe McDermott has opened a paella and tapas specialist, Bomba, at Saw Mill Yard in Holbeck Urban Village, on the city’s South Bank. Named after a variety of rice from eastern Spain, Bomba started off as a paella delivery service during lockdown, operating from Kirkgate Market. Joe originally made his mark on […]
Flat Iron Square, the street-food venue that looks like an overspill from nearby Borough Market, has moved home, reopening this week on the site of its stablemate St Felix Place, 200 yards along Southwark Street. Founded in 2016 by Ben Lovett of Mumford and Sons, Flat Iron Square was forced to move by redevelopment work […]
The rise of the meat-free burger continues apace, with two hitherto red-blooded burger operations opening specialist vegan outlets in London since the New Year. Honest Burgers, now a sizeable chain with about 40 branches across England, has unveiled V Honest in Garrick Street, Covent Garden, to showcase the popular vegan options it has already developed, […]
A Lancashire village known for its delicious ducks is soon to have an ambitious new restaurant – with foraged ingredients expected to highlight the menu. Ye Horns Inn at Goosnargh, near Preston, is to reopen in March with Yorkshire-based forager Alysia Vasey as operations consultant and Sean Wrest (both pictured) as head chef. Sean, formerly head […]
The Ledbury, London’s dominant restaurant of the last decade, is to reopen next month after being mothballed for almost two years through the pandemic. While it was no secret that some sort of revival was on the cards, his legion of fans will be relieved to learn that chef-proprietor Brett Graham plans to carry on […]
Here’s our regular summary of what the national and local restaurant critics have been writing about in the week ending 16 January 2022. ***** The Sunday Times When Marina O’Loughlin paid a visit to Toklas, she initially felt like it was “the café attached to an out-of-town retail park” but when she left, she was […]
The team behind The Oystermen seafood bar in Covent Garden are scheduled to open their follow-up this month – Walter’s in West Dulwich, which they are pitching as a neighbourhood restaurant serving modern British cooking. Rob Hampton and Matt Lovell launched The Oystermen in 2017, winning acclaim for the quality of both food and service. […]
Celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo is taking over a high-profile Italian restaurant in Cheshire frequented by footballers, it emerged this week as his My Pasta Bar trio reportedly went into liquidation with debts of £5million, including £37,000 owed to staff. The Alderley Edge branch of Piccolino, part of the Individual Restaurants group, last month announced it […]
The Chester Grosvenor, one of the heavyweight dining venues of the northwest, has appointed chef Elliot Hill as the successor to Simon Radley, who left last October after 30 years in the kitchen. Chester-born Elliot made his name as head chef at Liverpool skyscraper restaurant Panoramic 34, and earlier in his career worked at the […]
