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 […]

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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 […]

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⦿ 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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Tom Kerridge is hosting a week of dinners with the pick of West Country chefs at his new private-dining space The Shed, almost next door to his Marlow pub the Hand & Flowers, in the last week of March. The Gloucestershire-born chef has lined up Peter Sanchez of Casamia in Bristol (Monday  March 27), Michael […]

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⦿ The Observer’s Jay Rayner reviewed Tandoor Chop House, an Indian “concept” restaurant off the Strand, where he found the quality of the food was mixed and the prices high. “The best dish is the Dexter ‘dripping’ keema naan, a charred flatbread piled with highly spiced minced beef. Black pepper chicken tikka brings sizable cuts of bird […]

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Gidleigh Park in Devon has earned the AA’s ultimate five rosettes accolade, exactly a year after chef Michael Wignall took over the kitchen. Only 12 other restaurants in the UK share the motoring organisation’s highest distinction, and for the first time this award has been announced in January rather than waiting until September. Wignall’s cuisine at Gidleigh […]

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