Chef Aaron Potter opens his debut restaurant, Wildflowers, today in Newson’s Yard, a former Pimlico timber yard converted into a new ‘design destination’. Billed as ‘Mediterranean-inspired’, with high-quality seasonal produce cooked over coals, Wildflowers has a separate wine bar upstairs serving cicchetti-style snacks. Most recently executive chef at Maria G’s, Aaron has previously worked for […]
Southwest London restaurateur Rebecca Mascarenhas is crowdfunding towards the launch next month of a second branch of her Putney restaurant Home SW15 in her home village of Barnes. Supporters are being asked to ‘buy a brick’ for £100 to be displayed at Home SW13, in return for an invitation to the soft launch in early […]
Star chef Phil Howard will launch a specialist pasta bar in the heart of the West End next week. Notto opens on Thursday 3 November at 199 Piccadilly, a few doors along from the Royal Academy. It is the first pitch at the mid-market for a chef associated with the heights of fine dining, having […]
The head chef of Elystan Street has left the restaurant due to what has been described as a “professional difference of opinion”. On Instagram, Toby Burrowes said: “Well the time has come, I have stepped down as head chef at Elystan Street, due to a professional difference of opinion.” The chef moved to Elystan Street […]
East Grinstead’s “lovely country manor house” Gravetye Manor will close on 2 January for four months to develop a new space for the hotel’s restaurant. Reopening in May 2018 the new look restaurant, under head chef George Blogg, is being designed by architect Sir Charles Knowles, in collaboration with interior designer Claire Nelson (The Ledbury and Elystan Street) […]
Harden’s has released the final shortlist for this year’s definitive London Restaurant Awards, which takes place on 11 September at The Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Square. Nominations for the awards are derived statistically from Harden’s 27-year-old annual survey of UK restaurant-goers. This year 8,500 people contributed 50,000 nominations within the categories specified by Harden’s. The […]
The Cinnamon Club SW1 From 12 August £38 pp Kick off shooting season on the Glorious Twelfth at Vivek Singh’s classy Indian – set within the Grade II listed Old Westminster Library. On the menu: Tandoor Smoked Breast of Grouse with bitter fenugreek, corn stir-fry and tamarind-cumin jus. This dish, marrying the flavours of the subcontinent with resolutely British […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer reviewed The Other Naughty Piglet, a branch of Brixton’s Naughty Piglets inside Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new theatre in Victoria, The Other Place, where he found “a kind of modern British cooking with wallops of umami”. “Sometimes the cleverness is textural. A pile of white crab meat sits atop a heap of […]
⦿ Jay Rayner of The Observer hit the jackpot with a visit to Riley’s Fish Shack, “two full side-access shipping containers fitted out steampunk-style” overlooking St Edward’s Bay in Tynemouth, near Newcastle, which he declared “the eating experience of the year”. “It is the pristine quality of fish cookery you always hope to find in one of those fancy, raised […]
⦿ Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard reviewed Elystan Street 4/5, Phil Howard’s new restaurant in Chelsea, where she ate some “sublime” dishes but gasped at the prices and missed having a tablecloth. “Smoked mackerel velouté with Porthilly oysters — from the River Camel estuary — with leek hearts and eel toast is a secular […]
